It was during the traditional Boot Washing Ceremony that we first saw the ice. Everything had to be hauled to the SA Agulhas’s poop deck for the ceremony: boots dipped and scrubbed in soapy water; inners vacuumed; jackets, beanies, gloves, camera bags, backpacks, tripods – anything that might be taken into the field once we arrived in Antarctica – worked through with tweezers and fine eyes.
No outside contaminants can be brought on to the continent, although what other than lichen and birds could possibly survive unsupported in the coldest, driest, windiest place on Earth?
In the midst of the scrubbing and shining, somebody spotted it.
“Look! An iceberg!” came the cry over the drone of the vacuum cleaner.
We dropped everything, scrambling over bags and boots and across the soapy deck.
There it was on the starboard side, a solid and solitary piece of ice standing out starkly against the grey sky and the black sea.
The old hands sucked on cigarettes, laughing at the stampede of feet and camera flashes.
“This is nothing,” said Public Works man “Wessie” van der Westhuizen. “That’s tiny, a baby. Just wait.”
But to us newbies – what a monolith! What a massive, hulking piece of ice!
“Look! Another one! On the other side!”
We scurried to the left – more feet, more flashes. The second was even bigger, two, maybe three times the size of the first.
Within half an hour, we were surrounded.
Great, long sheets of ice spread out all around us, crumbling under the weight of the Agulhas, her hull shuddering with every crack and push further south.
“It’s like we’re sailing through a Slush Puppy, bru,” drawled oceanographer Bjorn von der Heyden.
Families of penguins cruised by on their floating islands. Fat, blubbery seals stared up at us with baleful eyes. And everybody swore they just saw a whale.
Summer in the Antarctic meant life in the Antarctic.
The sun cut through the chilly air, triggering photosynthesis in the microscopic phytoplankton trapped in the ice during the long, dark winter. The food chain is kick-started. Phytoplankton to krill. Krill to penguins, petrels, seals. Seals to whales.
The oceanographers, normally hidden in their cramped labs of shelves and flasks, took to the monkey deck, staring out at the Southern Ocean for hours on end – surfers and hippies and dolphin huggers wearing tie-dyed bloomers and plastic flowers in their hair. Not examining ocean life, but trying to understand the ocean itself, the processes and mechanisms that tie it all together.
“The Earth is covered with 70 percent water,” explained team leader Nazeera Hargey. “This should be the largest field of science, yet we know more about the surface of the moon than the ocean floor.”
Because below the crashing waves and pack ice, the Southern Ocean plays an important regulatory role in our currents and climate.
“For many centuries the Southern Ocean, with its Roaring Forties and Screaming Fifties, has been a mythically remote part of our planet: pristine, freezing, foreboding; the domain of hardy adventurers and whale hunters,” Dr Pedro Monteiro of the CSIR wrote recently.
“Today we know that it has been one of our most important assets as a regulator of regional climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide for at least the past million years.”
Scientists estimate that up to 40 percent of all man-made carbon dioxide emitted since the Industrial Revolution has been absorbed by the Southern Ocean.
Carbon dioxide dissolves in the surface water of the ocean. This cools and sinks, taking the carbon dioxide with it – the “solubility pump”. Meanwhile, phytoplankton absorb the gas during photosynthesis before depositing it in deeper waters – the “biological pump”.
But the extremes of the Earth have always been most susceptible to our changing climate and scientists now believe that this regulatory capacity may be at risk.
The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is causing temperatures to rise, and increasing the intensity of the vicious winds that whip over the Southern Ocean and dredge up the carbon-rich waters deep below.
But the stronger the winds, the more carbon-rich water on the surface of the ocean. And the more carbon dioxide in the water, the less it can absorb.
A stall in the Southern Ocean carbon sink – even a slowing down of its air-water exchange – would mean an increase in the amount of man-made carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere. It’s bad news for a planet already failing to meet its carbon-emissions targets.
“Changes to ocean systems are not manageable,” wrote Monteiro. “Once these ocean systems begin to change, it will be impossible to regulate the rate of change.”
For the oceanographers aboard the Agulhas, it meant donkey work: a repetitive schedule of collecting water samples from the engine room every four hours, and then the wait and the slow drip, drip, drip of filtering every vial for carbon, dissolved oxygen, iron and chlorophyll.
Every two hours, they launched floats into the ocean, their little hydraulic engines navigating through the dark waves to a specific co-ordinate where they would measure temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen at a determined depth.
The ocean was full of them, thousands of torpedo-shaped robots transmitting data directly to an international online database every 10 days. They did it last year. They would do it again next year.
And over time, the scientists would begin to see what was happening in the Southern Ocean, how we all could be affected.
The Bears came for us three nights later.
We were now deep in the Screaming Sixties, well into the Antarctic Circle.
For days we had been taunted with mind games and remarks by the old hands.
“Oooh, you’re going to be baptised,” said Bernie, the ship’s purser, one evening. “You’re going to freeze.”
We knew something nasty was coming our way – but when?
High on the monkey deck, watching penguins and catching snowflakes on our tongues, we heard the broadcast scratching through the speakers from the bridge below. “Ahoy! Yonder ship upon our ocean. Slow down quick and stop your motion!”
We rushed to the railings, leaning over to get a better listen.
The voice was Gideon van Zyl’s, the Environmental Affairs departmental co-ordinator and expedition leader. But this was no formal broadcast. The words he was saying… “I am the herald from King Neptune’s Court sent to announce tomorrow’s sport,” he said. “King Neptune and his Queen Amphitrite, the Bears and Barber all delight that you have crossed the Polar ring. We’ve all been waiting for this fling.”
Shipmaster Gavin Syndercombe’s voice crackled in response: “Those old salts who have crossed this line and landlubbers here for the first time are ready for the ceremonial fray.”
“Farewell – for now I’ll not say more,” said Gideon the Herald. “Until tomorrow on the Helideck, be prepared for a thorough check.”
The transmission ended.
For a moment we just stood there, our eyes wide, our mouths open. The Night of the Bears. It was happening.
We skidded across the slippery deck and down the narrow staircases back to our cabins.
And somewhere deep below, the banging started.