I’m gazing out the port hole in my bedroom window and the view is remarkable. We have just crossed the Drake Passage, known for being quite the hellion, on our way to the wildly beautiful continent of Antarctica, the end of the world. Icebergs meander by like hurried businessmen, not faltering to give way and forcing us to take a circuitous route to reach our point of interest.

The giant Wandering Albatross soars across the bow. As Robert Cushman Murphy put it, “I now belong to a higher cult of mortals for I have seen the albatross.” Their wingspan extends up to 11 feet! Colonies of penguins loudly chatter with each other going about their penguin business. I try to fit in with them but to no avail, they know there’s an outsider in their midst and shun me from their daily activities.

The entire ecosystem relies on the ice here, it’s integral to each level for survival. Diatoms (a type of phytoplankton) make up the bottom of the food chain and can be found on the undersides of pack ice. Krill, the next level up the food web, gain their subsistence from the diatoms on the ice. Krill, therefore, hang out around the surface where the diatoms are and feed anything from the smaller silver fish to the gigantic blue whale. As you can clearly see, krill are extremely important making diatoms extremely important making pack ice extremely important. So, if you take-away one thing from this post, let it be that ice is very, very important for the survival of everything in Antarctica!

It was an incredible trip, one that I will never forget in my lifetime. The naturalists on board the ship were a fantastic group of people that are passionate about this wildly beautiful and untamed area of the world. There is wildlife that most of the world will never have the chance to see but it is so worth caring about and making proper decisions in our everyday life to maintain the pristine conditions that exist in Antarctica. We are all connected on this planet.

Thank you to Lindblad Expeditions/National Geographic and Trey Byus for allowing me to join this trip! Thank you also to Fourth Element, the undergarments kept me nice and toasty warm, to Reef Photo & Video for giving me a camera to document my trip, to GoPro for the same reason, and of course to the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society and Rolex for providing me with a year of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Below is a video I made of the trip, enjoy!