Dream, plan, go: Explore the world with nature travel photographer Tom Dempsey. Buy images from galleries.
From Ushuaia, Argentina, we cruised 12 days to Antarctica, through Beagle Channel and across the treacherous 400-mile Drake Straight, February 9-20, 2005. My father, my wife, a friend and I explored the frozen Antarctic Peninsula for 6 of the 12 days. Our voyage on the good ship Explorer was run by the excellent value tour company now called G Adventures (formerly GAP). We left winter in Seattle to enjoy summer in Buenos Aires, Patagonia (Argentina & Chile), and Antarctica from February 3 to March 11, 2005.
Click here to see my images of Antarctica.
You should normally not approach penguins closer than 15 feet, according to Antarctic tourism rules. But if you lie down on the ground more than 15 feet away, curious Gentoo penguin chicks will often walk over to inspect you closely.
Two and a half years after our successful trip on the M/S Explorer, it sank after hitting ice on November 23, 2007. The Explorer, owned by Canadian travel company G.A.P. Adventures, took on water after hitting ice at 12:24 a.m. EST (0524 GMT) on Friday November 23, 2007. 154 passengers and crew climbed into lifeboats and drifted some six hours in calm waters. A Norwegian passenger boat picked them up and took them to Chile’s Antarctic Eduardo Frei base. There they were fed, clothed, checked by a doctor, and later flown to Punta Arenas, Chile. The ship sank hours after the passengers and crew were evacuated.
In telling this harrowing story in November 2007, Reuters News Pictures Service published three of my M/S Explorer images dating from 2005.
Crabeater seals (Lobodon carcinophaga) rest on an ice floe in Antarctica while ecotourists cruise by in a Zodiac boat. Crabeater seals primarily eat krill and are the most numerous large species of mammal on Earth, after humans and cattle.
For best photography of wildlife and icebergs, get a long telephoto lens 300mm or longer (in terms of 35mm film) with image stabilization. Bring a good DSLR or mirrorless camera with 11x zoom lens as described in the BUY>CAMERAS menu.
Since the industrial revolution began, humans have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration by 35% through burning of fossil fuels, deforesting land, and grazing livestock. The world’s climate scientists agree that human-caused carbon-compound gas emissions are accelerating global warming, rapidly melting glaciers, and raising ocean levels worldwide. Humans have forced a grand warming experiment affecting all life on earth, with unknown consequences.
Industrial nations are challenged to replace fossil fuels with energy sources that don’t increase atmospheric greenhouse gases. Other than hydroelectric, solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources plus energy conservation, few viable alternatives currently exist to replace growing industrial addiction to oil and coal. Nuclear energy has serious problems of safety and long-term storage of radioactive waste. Japan’s tragic 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami caused expensive nuclear plant meltdowns, forcing long-term evacuations of hundreds of thousands of residents.
Global population size and demands upon earth’s resources need to be reduced to sustainable levels before consequences become dire.
Global warming is measurably highest in the Northern Hemisphere (which has the most land mass) and on the Antarctic Peninsula. The Antarctic Peninsula is a relatively small but climatically important piece of the continent of Antarctica which juts into the westward path of the strongest and fastest of all ocean currents, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC).
Two-thirds of the planet’s freshwater is frozen in Antarctica. Surprisingly, Antarctica is actually a desert in terms of annual precipitation — only 200 mm (8 inches) along the coast and much less inland. The average temperature of the continent of Antarctica is predicted to rise slightly over the next 50 years. But warming deep ocean waters just off the continental shelf may be the biggest threat: If floating Antarctic ice shelves melt faster over the sea, land-based feeder glaciers will send more ice to melt, thus worsening the current rate of sea level rise. The extra ice that flows off or melts from Antarctic land will be partly offset by increased snowfall expected as climate warms. Climate scientists are feverishly studying these important, complex questions:
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