Antarctica's Potential

Visitors to McMurdo sound can climb a small rocky point and visit Scott's hut, built in 1902 and last occupied in 1916. Inside they will find quantities of 50-year-old provisions in good condition—biscuits, lentils, dried fruit, and other staples for the men, hay and grain for the Siberian ponies, and sides of seal meat for the sled dogs. Apart from its poignancy, this scene shows why there have been suggestions that the Antarctic be used as a mammoth deep freeze, to store surplus food and grains indefinitely without either maintenance costs or charges for electricity.

Could cold storage be an economic use of Antarctica's most plentiful resource—cold weather? The answer is probably not, at least for some time to come, and then only under very special circumstances. Cold storage can be obtained more cheaply from areas much closer to the great concentrations of industry and commerce in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere, as can many other things that the world wants and that the Antarctic could provide—materials like metals and fuels, for example. There are other possibilities, however, that are more in line with the Antarctic's special characteristics.

The Climate is the most severe in the world. Summer temperatures range from above freezing to -60° F. Recorded winter temperatures have gone as low as -127° F. Strong winds aggravate the effects of cold, and men and equipment have to be protected from the penetration and abrasive powers of drifting snow. Ninety-five percent or more of the land area (consisting almost entirely of rock) is overlain with glacial ice up to fourteen thousand feet thick. Most of the surface of the continent, therefore, is unstable. It flows slowly toward the sea, forming crevasses as it passes over hills or islands, and breaking off into icebergs far out into the ocean. This constant shift creates costly problems of land and sea transportation, airstrips, permanent habitations, and possible mine shafts or drilling rigs.

A commercial possibility for which the continent's characteristics might be more of a help than a hindrance is tourism. Travelers are struck by the beauty of the Antarctic Peninsula and its islands, Victoria Land, McMurdo Sound, and other areas. Mountains rise ten thousand feet from the water's edge, icebergs stand in fantastic shapes, snowstorms and polar sunsets present beauty of color and form. The penguins, seals, and whales are as unusual as the climate and the landscape.

The lure of the unknown is strong in the Antarctic. Its heroic explorers are all of recent history, some still living. Few men have seen the Antarctic, not all of it has been explored, and most of it is mapped only sketchily.

Tourism has already established a beachhead on the continent. The first evidence of the tourist potential was a pair of expeditions organized by the Argentine Naval Transport Command, which went to the Antarctic Peninsula area in January and February of 1958.

In 1965, Lindblad Travel, Inc. announced the first commercial, public expedition to Antarctica. There was an excess of applications despite the price tag of $2,800 and up for the 30-day tour to the Peninsula area. Fifty-eight persons were aboard the Lapataia, an Argentine naval officers' cruise ship, on the initial tour in January of 1966. One hundred tourists took part in the two tours of 1966-67, undeterred by a price that had been raised to over $3,600. In 1967-68 the polar freighter Magga Dan, chartered by Lindblad, made two four-week voyages from New Zealand to Antarctic islands, Victoria Land, and McMurdo Station. Her limited passenger capacity (20 tourists were taken on each trip) resulted in fares of $5,500, including round-trip air travel from San Francisco to New Zealand.

Another activity which the Antarctic seems well adapted is the harvesting of krill. In recent years there has been increasing interest in the use of the minute sea animals known as zooplankton to supplement the world's supplies of protein. The best opportunities for launching such an industry in the near future may well be in the Antarctic seas because these waters are thought to be among the most prolific in the world. Conditions there favor the growth of phytoplankton —the floating plants that provide food for the zooplankton, on which fish and all higher forms of life depend.

The principal zooplankton of the Antarctic, and the chief food of the whales, the crabeater seal, the penguins, and the abundant petrels, terns, and albatrosses, is the small, shrimp-like krill. Mature krill are only an inch or two in length. If it were not for their tendency to congregate in dense schools they would be of no value as food for such large animals as whale or seal. The whales, with built-in nets of baleen (whalebone) and hairlike fibers, swim through the schools and strain out meals of a ton or more in a few minutes. So rich and easily gathered is this diet that the whales return each austral summer to gorge themselves.

Overexploitation has so reduced the whale population that in recent years there have been fewer and fewer whales to eat the krill. Could the krill themselves be harvested to make meal for animal or human food without dependence on the whale to gather the output? According to one estimate, the whales were eating 38 million tons of krill a year during the thirties. Other estimates are much higher. But even the low figure far exceeds the 1967 catch of Peruvian anchovetas, the most comparable commercially utilized species at present. In 1967, the catch of anchovetas was 9.8 million metric tons, valued at $10 per ton. Each six tons of catch yielded one ton of fish meal which was valued at about $110 a ton.

For krill, prices in the range of $10 per ton would not bear the cost of freight from the Antarctic to the principal markets, but prices in the range of $100-$150 for meal could readily do so. If factory ships could process krill into meal for animal or human food, an economic industry of considerable size might develop and ship its products to the Northern Hemisphere.