View from the bottom of the world
From a ship in Antarctica, it’s clear why we must protect our oceans, writes Eleanor Hooper.
Crossing the infamous Drake Passage, where three of the world’s oceans meet, feels fitting after a year-long campaign for global ocean protection. After all, this body of water has traversed almost every corner of our blue planet, and these converging currents are a reminder that our oceans are borderless, and protecting them requires co-operation on an international scale.
Our ship, the 50-metre Arctic Sunrise, is an icebreaker. This allows us to carve a path through some of the most inhospitable waters on Earth.
It sounds impressive, but it also means that this ship rolls more than most, and has earned the nickname The Washing Machine from crew. As we lurch and roll through the waves, I’ve spent plenty of time out on deck staring at the horizon, trying to keep my lunch.
Time seems stretched the further south we go, and there are none of the usual signals for the beginning or end of the day. We live in constant daylight, the skies darkening to a dusky blue at around midnight, and returning to a punishingly bright white by the early hours.
John, our New Zealand boat engineer, warns me that, after a few weeks, these endless days will start to seriously mess you up unless you follow a strict routine.
A week into our six-week journey, I first step foot on Antarctic soil with the mission to capture pictures of the declining chinstrap penguin colony in the South Shetlands. As we get closer to the main colony, we can see groups of adult chinstraps nervously protecting their fluffy young from opportunistic skua, the huge brown carnivorous birds that even try their luck dive-bombing our assistant cook.
Something people don’t tell you about penguins is that they really stink, and groups of them are easily spottable by the pink poo surrounding them. But it’s hard not to be enamoured by these tiny awkward creatures, carving out a life at the bottom of the world.
Instead of Netflix, my evenings are spent watching them through binoculars as they jump on to icebergs, lose their footing, and slide down into the water below.
For the past year, our ships have been travelling from pole to pole to show the urgent need for a network of ocean sanctuaries. The Antarctic is the final stop on this journey to document the rarest and most precious ecosystems on Earth.
Climate breakdown is transforming parts of the Antarctic faster than anywhere else on the planet. This is bad news for the amazing diversity of life found here, but it’s bad news for everything else too.
Without the Southern Ocean, the climate crisis would already be much worse – this is a sea that has taken the brunt of most of global warming’s heat since 1970.
As well as climate, there are myriad other issues that threaten this part of the world, from rampant overfishing to plastic pollution. Scientists have been clear that, if the world’s oceans are going to keep providing food, oxygen, and climate regulation for us – if marine life is to have a chance of survival – then at least 30 per cent of them must be made into sanctuaries within the next decade.
The problem is that there are only a handful of global organisations set up to protect our oceans, and even the most celebrated fall far short of the mark.
The Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, or CCMLAR, is made up of representatives from a variety of countries, including New Zealand, and is tasked with the guardianship of Antarctica, but the sad reality is that it’s not yet provided any meaningful protection.
The biggest blow came last year when, during a global meeting, its representatives failed to formally protect the Weddell Sea, East Antarctica, and the Antarctic Peninsula, where I’m writing from. The regional body also failed to implement stronger management of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, or to develop a working plan on climate change.
There is good news among the bad. Right now, we have the chance of a lifetime to change the way we protect the world’s oceans.
Negotiations are under way at the United Nations for a pioneering Global Oceans Treaty. Done right, this treaty could pave the way for a network of ocean sanctuaries.
But the negotiations are teetering on a knife’s edge. All the potential is there, but without bold leadership it could go either way. For New Zealand’s part, the government delegation seems content to take a business-as-usual approach that many New Zealanders would find disappointing.
The world is in a dual climate and biodiversity emergency. We all have the shared experience of living through the sixth mass extinction. It’s frightening, but our small nation also has a reputation for world firsts and global leadership that belies its size. It’s time for New Zealand to be a leader now for the oceans.
I really feel that, writing this from the bottom of the world. I’m a long way from home, from a summer spent at the beach, running across hot sand. From barbecues and road trips. From hokey pokey icecream and the smell of sunscreen.
But as I look out the porthole of my cabin to this overwhelmingly vast and pristine place, I see that everything in our world is connected by these beautiful blue stretches of water. We must fight with everything we have to save them.