Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Recreating an Historic Antarctic Expedition

Here is an interesting article about people "recreating Adrien de Gerlache’s exploration of the Antarctic Peninsula with the ship Belgica, 110 years ago." I found this interesting in part because the article talks about this historical expedition that I had heard about before. Secondly as I learned about this expedition in the article I was amazed to learn that the crew of this expedition included Roald Amundsen, who was the first to reach the South Pole. This particular expedition is similar to Shackelton's Endurance one in that both got stuck in the ice. Gerlache's expedition ended up being the first to winter over in the Antarctic due to their getting stuck. This allowed them to collect scientific information that had not yet been collected due to no one staying the harsh winter yet. As part of this recreating history expedition (I assume they are skipping the 13 months of being stuck in the ice) those undertaking it are hoping to attention to the effects of climate change on Antarctica and encourage action to stop or slow it.

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