the explorers journal the global adventure issue - The Explorers Club

the explorers journalWinter 2007/2008editor’s noteA Global AdventureThis issue we set foot on literally every continent on Earth.In our lead story, Jon Bowermaster invites us along on hisOceans 8 expedition, which, as of this writing, is boundfor Antarctica’s Larsen Ice Shelf to complete the final legof a journey that has taken the avid kayaker to some of themost remote parts of our globe. Paddling through sharkinfestedwaters and treacherous seas, Bowermaster is ona quest to focus international attention on the plight of ouroceans, which are threatened by global warming, pollution,and overfishing.As part of our ongoing celebration of the InternationalPolar Year (see http://www.ipy.org/) we continue to highlightpioneering research in the polar environments. Thisissue, Kenneth L. Smith of the Monterey Bay AquariumResearch Institute shares his work unraveling the secretlives of Antarctica’s icebergs. Once thought to be littlemore than inanimate islands of frozen water, icebergs havebeen found to host complex independent ecosystems thatplay a critical role in the drawdown of carbon dioxide andorganic replenishment of our oceans. In the Arctic, Geoffrey Clark providesfresh insight into the events that unfolded during Adolphus W.Greely’s tragic Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881–1884.We are also privileged to publish selections from a rare portfolio ofimages that have lain dormant since the 1968 publication of RobertGardner’s Gardens of War: Life and Death in the New Guinea StoneAge and snapped by none other than Michael Clark Rockefeller onlymonths before his mysterious disappearance while documentingthe Asmat of southern New Guinea in November 1961. Taken duringGardner’s famed Harvard-Peabody Expedition to the Baliem Valley, thephotographs—some 4,000 in all—chronicle the daily lives of the warringDani, who, despite the encroachment of the modern world—continue topursue their traditional lifeways.an elegant manta ray swimsbeneath Jon Bowermaster’s kayakOff the atoll of Fakarava in theTuamotus. Photo by Peter McBrideAngela M.H. Schuster, Acting Editor-in-Chief