Antarctic info

Evening light in the South Shet­land Islands.

The fol­lo­wing litt­le intro­duc­tion to Ant­ar­c­ti­ca is exact­ly that – a litt­le intro­duc­tion – to offer an idea of most sub­jects of inte­rest. Of cour­se, Ant­ar­c­ti­ca is not­hing less than a con­ti­nent, not to men­ti­on all the islands sur­roun­ding it, but it is obvious­ly much less varied than, say, Euro­pe, which is so much more com­plex regar­ding all the histo­ry and cul­tu­re and dif­fe­rent land­scapes and cli­ma­te zones that you will find bet­ween Norway’s North Cape and Sili­cy. Ant­ar­c­ti­ca is much more homo­ge­neous bet­ween the Ross Sea and the tip of the Ant­ar­c­tic Pen­in­su­la, and lar­ge­ly inac­ces­si­ble any­way. The bene­fit is that this makes it pos­si­ble to squeeze an intro­duc­tion into a few pages, digi­tal­ly as or – on a later occa­si­on – in print, then much more com­pre­hen­si­ve.

The­se pages are curr­ent­ly (spring 2014) under pre­pa­ra­ti­on and sites will be added over a cou­ple of months.

• Ant­ar­c­ti­ca tra­vel infor­ma­ti­on: ship, itin­er­ari­es, when to tra­vel. Some thoughts about plan­ning a voya­ge.
• Histo­ry. You should at least have heard of the­se chap­ters of ant­ar­c­tic histo­ry for a suc­cessful con­ver­sa­ti­on with your fel­low ant­ar­c­tic tra­vel­lers or even your ship his­to­ri­an.
• Are­as. You are likely to see some of the­se places on a trip to Ant­ar­c­ti­ca:
1. Ushua­ia and the Bea­gle Chan­nel
2. Cape Horn and the Dra­ke Pas­sa­ge
3. The Falk­land Islands
4. South Geor­gia
5. The South Sand­wich Islands
6. The South Ork­ney Islands
7. The South Shet­land Islands
8. The Wed­dell Sea
9. The west coast of the Ant­ar­c­tic Pen­in­su­la
10. Peter I Island
11. The Ross Sea
12. Mac­qua­rie Island
• Flo­ra. A rather short page…
• Fau­na. From alba­tros­ses and pen­gu­ins to wha­les and seals.
• Ant­ar­c­tic envi­ron­men­tal pro­blems and what you can do about them. There’s more to it than cli­ma­te chan­ge!