the explorers journal the global adventure issue - The Explorers Club

square-kilometer halo of sea ice forms aroundthe continent, and each spring, trillions of tonsof fresh water are released into the ocean as itthaws. This is the planet’s great annual climatecycle, the thermodynamic engine that drives thecirculation of ocean currents, redistributing thesun’s heat, regulating climate, forcing the upwellingof deep-ocean nutrients, setting the tempo ofthe planet’s weather. The Antarctic affects all ourlives, but through forces so deep and elementalthat we’re not even aware of them.Our Larsen Ice Shelf Expedition will providean empirical look at how the seventh continent ischanging and evolving and dramatically influencingthe world’s oceans. The eastern side of theAntarctic Peninsula is seldom seen either by scientistsor explorers, because it is more exposed tobig seas and rapidly changing weather, unprotectedby big islands as are the better-known parts ofthe western side of the peninsula.In March 2002, scientists watched the Antarctic’s500-billion-ton Larsen-B ice shelf shatter intothousands of tiny icebergs before their eyes. Itsbreak-up was an early warning sign. The peninsularice shelves are considered among the firstindicators of global warming. What happened sodramatically to the Larsen Ice Shelf suggests therest of the peninsula’s ice may one day calve ordeteriorate. No one knows how quickly that willhappen. All this warming and shifting is also havingclear and extremely troubling impact on lifearound its shores. We intend to get as close aswe can to what remains of the Larsen Ice Shelf, todocument from sea level how it is today.The thread running through all of my expeditionshas been the kayaks, which serve as floating ambassadors.It wouldn’t be the same to approachthese places by Zodiac or fishing boat, or by road.In the kayaks we have been able to reach seldomseencorners of the world, examine the health ofthe oceans from sea level and come face-to-bowwith people whose lives are inextricably tied tothose oceans.Each expedition has been a unique adventure.The logistical challenges have been enormous,leading to the occasional snafu—such as havingthe boats mistakenly delivered to Ho Chi MinhCity rather than to Hanoi. We’ve struggled tonavigate through ice, through fog, through stormyseas, and through politics. No one, for example,had previously sought permission to take kayaksalong the coast of northern Vietnam. When I approachedthe Foreign Press Center in Hanoi forpermission in 2000, I was greeted by a directorwith a smile and a cloud of cigarette smoke.“That… will…be…quite…impossible,” he said.The year that followed was full of tense, on-again,off-again negotiations with the government, whichultimately led to an arrangement whereby I wouldpay a healthy fee for a “filming permit” to be allowedto bring the kayaks and the team into thecountry. We also had to agree to take along anofficial monitor—a non-swimming, ocean-hating,Elvis-loving, pro-Communist monitor named LinhCua, who kept to his post for every paddle strokedown 1,800 kilometers of coastline, from the Chineseborder to Hoi An.While Linh was a slightly disconcerting additionto the team, Vietnamese-born social worker andtranslator Ngan Nguyen was a delight. I’d foundNgan, who grew up in New Orleans, through aninternet site read by resettled Vietnamese refugees.Her father had been a helicopter pilot withthe South Vietnamese Air Force, and on the lastday of the war in 1975 he’d helped shuttle Americansfrom Saigon to a waiting ship. As a reward,he was allowed to bring his family aboard; Nganwas three years old. She grew up to graduatefrom Tulane, then receive a master’s in internationalrelations from Tufts, and she had returnedto Vietnam several times, including a trip in 2000as part of the delegation that accompanied PresidentClinton.Though Ngan admitted she wasn’t an experiencedkayaker, we welcomed her to our teambecause of her knowledge of the country. Andbecause she was a southerner traveling for thefirst time in the north, each day was a revelationfor her, and thus for the team, especially when wepaddled the Ben Hai River, which was the dividingline between north and south. As we slipped thekayaks into the river that day, I noticed Ngan wascrying. Rubbing the back of her hands across hercheeks, she explained there were two reasons forher tears: first, she had always imagined arriving inthe north from the south, as a victor, and second,because this man-made line, drawn in a Genevaconference room in 1954, had in part resulted inthe deaths of more than three million Vietnamese,from both sides of the tragic conflict.By contrast, on our Oceania trip, we found theTuamotus to be sparsely populated and remote.18