Sometime within the next few decades perhaps as soon as 2020 there will be open water here. David Attenborough, Frozen Planet VII: On Thin Ice
September 1980: since then there’s been a 30% drop of the area covered by ice. ibid.
To the naked eye glaciers don’t appear to move at all. ibid.
In Antarctica there is ten times more ice. ibid.
Antarctica ... This is the coldest, windiest place in the world. David Attenborough, The Blue Planet s1e4: Frozen Seas, BBC 2001
Antarctica: the coldest, the harshest and the most remote continent on Earth. No human beings has ever descended into the depths that surround it. Until now. David Attenborough, Blue Planet s2e2: The Deep, BBC 2017
We find life here in unimaginable abundance … In the deep sea there is more life than anywhere else on Earth. ibid.
A fish with a transparent head filled with jelly so that it can look up through its skull. ibid.
Alien-like creatures produce dazzling displays of light. ibid.
As far down as three and a half miles there are more species of coral in the deep than on shallow tropical reefs. ibid.
The ethereal snailfish: at five miles down this is the deepest living fish so far discovered. ibid.
Autumn in Atka Bay Antarctica. Just a few weeks ago this was open sea. Now, a new frozen landscape is forming. This new world appears devoid of life. Well, almost. An Emperor penguin. And he is not alone. Thousands of Emperors are coming to this frozen bay. They are here because the new ice provides the safest place for them to breed. David Attenborough, Dynasties s1e2: Emperor, BBC 2018
Emperors pair up anew every year … This bond needs to be one of the strongest in Nature … The couples now face weeks of waiting while their eggs develop. ibid.
He will now have sole responsibility for their egg all through the long harsh winter. ibid.
The males now perform one of the most spectacular demonstrations of cooperation in Nature. ibid.
Two hundreds million years ago our planet looked very different than it does today. It was entirely covered by sea which surrounded one super continent we call Pangea. And then Pangea began to break up. Life was cast adrift on fragments of land. And these fragments eventually became our seven continents. David Attenborough, Seven Worlds, One Planet I: Antarctica, BBC 2019
We are changing the world so rapidly that wildlife is now facing of its greatest challenges yet. ibid.
Of all the continents, one was sighted by humans just two hundred years ago. ibid.
Only one mammal can live this far south: the Weddell seal. ibid.
One of the richest feeding ground in all the world’s oceans. ibid.
The frozen surface of the sea hides a great secret: it may be hostile above the ice, but below it conditions are so stable that life over millennia has had time to diversify. Creatures here grow to a great size … ibid.
Looking down on our planet it may come as a surprise to find just how much of it is blanketed in snow and ice. These vast frozen wildernesses cover more than a fifth of the Earth. David Attenborough, Frozen Planet s2e2: Frozen Ocean, BBC 2022
Our frozen wildernesses are disappearing at faster rates than ever before. ibid.
The largest frozen expanse on Earth: Antarctica. It’s twice the size of Australia. Here, temperatures fall to minus 80 degrees Centigrade. It’s the coldest place on Earth. There is only one animal here hardy enough to raise its family in winter: the Emperor Penguin. ibid.
At the far south of our planet lies the most hostile of the Earth’s frozen lands: Antarctica. Here, temperatures can fall to below minus 80 Celsius. And winds blow up to 200 miles an hour. Its icy centre is almost devoid of life. But on the edge of Antarctica, some creatures find a way not only to survive but to flourish. David Attenborough, Frozen Planet s2e4: Frozen South
Dawn over a silent forest a few hundred miles from the South Pole ... Here there are polar dinosaurs. Walking with Dinosaurs: Spirits of the Ice Forest, BBC 1999
Antarctica 106,000,000 B.C. ... A fully grown Polar-Allosaur needs about one hundred kilos of meat a week. ibid.
Great God! This is an awful place. Robert Falcon Scott, diary 17th January 1912
Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale. Robert Falcon Scott, ‘Message to the Public’, printed The Times 11th February 1913
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound! Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
All you hear is the huge black roar of the wind. It’s just like you’re in a vortex. Ranulph Fiennes, polar adventurer
We had discovered an accursed country. We had found the Home of the Blizzard. Douglas Mawson, Home of the Blizzard
Lecture: The South Pole Sir Ernest Shackleton Thursday November 21 at 8. The Chair will be taken by George T Lynam Esq. Poster
Antarctica: five and a half million square miles of land almost completely covered in ice. It is the coldest, driest and windiest place on Earth. Its desolate beauty has been seen by just a handful of people. Time Shift: Antarctica: Of Ice and Men, BBC 2011
Cook might not have made landfall, but his voyage helped solidify the idea of a vast ice-bound continent. ibid.
Each expedition reached closer towards the holy grail. ibid.
In December 1910 Scott set sail for Antarctica on an ambitious mission to research the continent and conquer the Pole. ibid.
Their Norwegian rivals, led by Roald Amundsen, had got there more than a month before them. ibid.
Admiral Richard Byrd [author Alone] made the first flight to the South Pole in 1929. ibid.
The Nazis sprinkled the ice with metal swastikas. ibid.
Antarctica: this is the coldest and most unforgiving place on Earth. Destination Truth s3e14, Skyfy 2007
A powerful paranormal presence has been felt in the long abandoned whaling station on Deception Island. ibid.
Further south, scientists working at Vernadsky Station have noted unnerving activity. ibid.
September 9th 1904: on board the Discovery homeward bound from the Antarctic ... I leave behind a whole continent: vast, mysterious, inhospitable. Scott of the Antarctic 1948 starring John Mills & Christopher Lee & Diana Churchill & Harold Warrender & Anne Firth & Derek Bond & Reginald Beckwith & James Robertson Justice & Kenneth More & Sam Kydd et al, director Charles Frend, music Ralph Vaughan Williams
The first leg of our journey – halfway round the world. ibid.
Goodbye. God bless and keep you, my dearest. Until … ibid. wife to husband
Dear Kathleen, a last note from a hopeful position. I think it’s going to be all right. ibid. Scott’s last letter home
Great God! This is an awful place. ibid.
The wind is playing strange tricks. ibid.
We are not going strong. ibid.
I’m just going outside. I may be away some time. ibid.
It’s the coldest, windiest, driest, and most desolate landscape on the planet with few permanent residents except penguins and seals. This frosty continent appears locked in a perpetual ice age. Secrets Beneath the Ice, Eden 2016
90% of all the ice in the world. ibid.
The ice is melting both in Antarctica and the Arctic. ibid.
Have Antarctica’s ice-sheets ever collapsed before? ibid.
Less precipitation than the Sahara. (Antarctic & Ice) ibid.
The powerful drill bores down over three-quarters of a mile bringing up twelve feet or core at a time. Each foot averaging a thousand years of climate history. ibid.
There’s ten times as much ice in the east than the west. ibid.
These are the Dry Valleys – cold, barren, and except for a few scientists almost completely devoid of life. ibid.
‘Antarctica may hold lost remnants of an extraterrestrial civilisation that existed there thousands and thousands of years ago.’ Ancient Aliens s11e1: Pyramids of Antarctica, Tsoukalos, History 2016
In the most remote place on Earth recent discoveries had left scientists stunned. Ancient Aliens s12e1: Return to Antarctica, History 2019
‘Something is going on there. And the question is what?’ ibid. Georgio
After thousands of years hidden by thick ice and protected by deadly temperatures the truth about Antarctica may finally be revealed. ibid.