How do you assess the health of a marine invertebrate—namely Antarctic krill—when there’s no historical baseline to measure it against? In an intriguing piece of detective work reported in PLoS ONE a team of researchers from China and the US turned to analyzing old seal hairs to determine changes in abundance of krill in the […]

Pawns in play on Antarctic ice-cap Russia and China are both planning to prospect for natural resources despite a long-standing agreement banning it The opening manoeuvres may have begun. During the Antarctic Treaty consultative meeting in Buenos Aires last June, Russia stated its intention to start prospecting for minerals, oil and gas in the white […]

PANAJI: Almost twenty-eight years after it set up the first permanent research station in the South Polar region, India is all set to commission and occupy third such station, named as ‘Bharti’, in Antarctica by March next year, a senior scientist associated with the project said today. After ‘Bharti’ becomes operational, India will join the […]

Today, Nov 7 2011, marks the 99th anniversary of the day Capt. Campbell successfully led his party out of the ungodly Antarctic on a gruelling five-week, 230-mile trek over sea ice from Inexpressible Island to Camp Evans to be rescued by the Terra Nova. In the early 1920s, Capt. Campbell retired from the Royal Navy […]

WATERBURY, Vt., Nov. 4, 2011 — /PRNewswire/ — Monday, November 7, 2011, Quark Expeditions, the leader in polar adventure, will launch the company’s first-ever flash sale for a four day period featuring the classic Antarctic Explorer voyage. Passengers who purchase one of four available November 2011 departures at regular price will receive a companion rate […]

A team of South American paleontologists announced one of the biggest Antarctic discoveries in years: the fossilized remains of a sauropod. The discovery comes in the form of a single broken vertebra, which is enough for paleontologists to say it came from a sauropod, but evidently not enough for them to say whether or not […]

DELEGATES at an ocean conservation conference have agreed to a plan to create marine reserves in the waters around Antarctica. The Commission for the Conservation of Marine Living Resources meeting in Hobart today accepted a framework be instituted for protected areas in the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean. Industrial fishing would be prohibited in the […]

300-square-mile portion of the Pine Island Glacier is expected to break off in the next few months, creating a massive Antarctic iceberg. The glacier is contributing the sea-level rise. http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2011/1104/Huge-chunk-of-Antarctic-ice-sheet-set-to-break-free

Irishman’s incomparable story remained in the dark due to his modesty and political necessity While the tragedy of Scott’s failure is central in the history of Polar exploration, the Kerry man’s extraordinary achievements during three expeditions to the Antarctic at the start of the last century lay dormant for almost 80 years until the publication […]