Complete with a dedicated science laboratory for passengers, the Sylvia Earle is a small purpose-built cruise vessel that adds value to your voyage...
Above the smudged tideline on Deception Island’s coarse black sand, we set up a 25 metre transect along the beach. Two overenthusiastic fur seals are too close so are shooed away while a solitary chinstrap penguin propells itself along the shoreline, its brushtail flickering like a broomstick sweeping away cobwebs.
Haining, our Chinese naturalist onboard AE Expeditions newest vessel, Sylvia Earle, takes us through the process of sampling for microplastics – the pernicious scourge of our oceans. We scoop up 2 centimetres depth of sand from five random sample points, add to a bucket, pour in seawater, and then upend the mixed sediment through a sieve. “We’re looking for plastics under 5mm,” he said, explaining microplastics are already polluting Antarctica and entering its food chain. Within the quadrats we remove two suspect pieces of white matter to be taken to our vessel for laboratory analysis.
Damoy Point (Mark Stratton)
Each time I visit Antarctica, I’m asked whether it’s fitting to travel to what is perceived as a fragile environment in the grip of climate change. West Antarctica’s glaciers are indisputably retreating; it’s commonplace down here to hear the gunshot ricochets of their facades crumbling away in slabs. Likewise, increasing red and green algae colours the snow, thriving off moister conditions due to warming temperatures. I see first-hand during a 11-day voyage around the Antarctic Peninsula, how heavy early summer snow is having a knock-on effect on penguin breeding.
“Warmer temperatures bring more precipitation, which falls as snow. It was especially thick around November when gentoo penguins were egg-laying,” said Anette Scheffer, the ship’s science coordinator. If penguins oviposit on snow rather than exposed rock their eggs freeze. At gentoo colonies, such as Damoy Point, we see few chicks and some of those are so undeveloped they face a race against time to mature and fledge before winter’s onset.
Enter the Sylvia Earle, brand new and in her maiden season. The small purpose-built cruise vessel hosts up to 132 passengers and is certified built carbon-neutral, her rounded Ulstein X-bow more efficient through seawater thus reducing fuel consumption. AE Expeditions is also pushing for B Corp certification from 2024: a root-and-branch assessment of a company’s whole social and environmental performance. But it’s the addition of its new science laboratory that appeals to me located within a striking split level glass atrium between decks six and seven at the bow, with a large library full of research books.
This new dedicated science lab heralds an upgrade in citizen science capability, allowing guests to participate in research that can add value to voyages to the seventh continent. She’s named after the legendary marine biologist, and scientist-in-residence, Dr Sylvia Earle, who I meet after the voyage for an exclusive interview for Wanderlust. She’d travelled to Argentina to formally launch the new vessel and sail on a one-off Antarctic Climate Expedition in February 2023, which aimed to highlight the ocean’s importance in mitigating climate change.
“There's plentiful evidence earth is in trouble and human actions in the polar regions have a magnified role in the future of life on earth,” she told me. “We’re taking life out of the ocean with practices like long lining and bulldozing the ocean floor and clear-cutting ocean life for seafood. We’re taking marine wildlife by the tonnage without appreciating the impact this has on planetary chemistry and on the food chains and the passage of nitrogen and carbon - all the ingredients that make life on earth possible”.
The Sylvia Earle is the new ship for AE Expeditions (Mark Stratton)
I ask Sylvia if we should be travelling to Antarctica at all? “There is of course a cost benefit to this, but it can be justified if those going to this sacred place go with respect and make a commitment to make a difference with the knowledge they acquire. There are many more fishing vessels in Antarctica than cruise-ships taking people who come in peace rather than doing harm. Travellers must pledge to make a difference and go with the promise to give back,” she explained.
The most direct way to give something back is by assisting research to foster a better understanding of Antarctica’s natural environment and the issues it faces. “Participating in citizen science is extremely helpful to scientists for whom the logistics and costs of coming down here are high,” said Annette. “I think all vessels should have a dedicated facility for science”. And she insists data collected is valuable. “Passengers recorded a humpback whale recently down here that had been spotted offshore in Brazil. This helps inform us of their migration routes and can guide potential changes to marine protected areas if we find high concentrations needing better protection”. Indeed, data collected over recent years by passengers’ humpback whale sightings helped the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IATTO) delineate a 10knot speed restriction for cruise vessels in whale-rich zones.
Passengers can help protect marine animals, including humpback whales, by recording their sightings (Mark Strattong)
Anette Scheffer on the zodiac (Mark Stratton)
Inspired by thoughts I can make a difference I throw myself into the citizen science program during my voyage down the Antarctic Peninsula (the continent’s archipelagic finger of land pointing towards Tierra del Fuego). We cruise down the Weddell Sea, on the peninsula’s eastern-side, aghast at tabular icebergs the size of small towns drifting away from the disintegrating Larsen iceshelf. We watch huge feeding flocks of Adelie penguins porpoising across the Southern Ocean and follow seal-eating orca. Typically, we make land daily to view wildlife, as at Deception Island where we carried out the microplastic survey.
Citizen science is fun to participate in and includes seabird surveys and sampling phytoplankton - the building block of the ocean food chain and responsible for generating every second breath of oxygen we take. Our photographs of humpback tails are entered into the Happy Whale app database: the whale fluke patterns are like individual fingerprints to identifying them. And we carry out a cloud survey certified by NASA with Polish crewmember, Paulina, timing observations for when a NASA satellite passes overhead. “NASA can see the upper levels of the cloud by satellite looking down, but our observations fill in their knowledge gap to what is happening beneath the cloud base,” said Paulina. “These observations are important to their research on ocean temperature warming and climate change”.
Huge flocks of Adelie penguins can be seen on the beach (Mark Stratton)
With Argentine naturalist, Natalia, we conduct the seabird survey on a blustery wet day in open ocean. One of any Antarctic voyage’s highlights is marvelling at the likes of black-browed albatrosses and giant petrels trailing the ships; their outstretched wings barely flapping, just riding the ocean thermals. Sometimes flocks of delicate cape petrels appear, their dappled wings earning them the sobriquet pintado meaning ‘painted’ in Spanish. Our observations are added into the e-bird app, part of an ongoing project by Cornell University. “The Idea is to help understand bird distribution for species like albatross,” Natalia said, helping to demarcate their better protection. Albatrosses represent one of the greatest tragedies of our oceans, tangled in long-line during deep-sea fishing.
Out on the zodiac (Mark Stratton)
Gentoo penguins with chicks (Mark Stratton)
Annette takes us out on a zodiac to analyse phytoplankton and krill. We dangle an instrument over the side called a Secchi disc and record the point of depth where we lose sight of it. This is where it enters the phytoplankton column, in our case around 8metres deep. “It’s critically important as the base of the food-chain, eaten by krill, which is in turn eaten by whales and penguins,” said Annette. “Phytoplankton seems to be decreasing and we’re not exactly sure why. Our research can assist determining whether this is due to atmospheric warming, acidification, or changes in sea currents,” she said.
Some of the krill we land in a trailing net, micro-crustaceans, are taken back to the laboratory for analysis under microscope. “It’s more to show passengers what the sea, which can look empty, is really like under the boat and all around them. It’s teeming with life,” said Annette. Satisfyingly, the microscope work also determines the two suspected items of microplastic we harvested on Deception Island are organic matter, likely bone.
“You’re not just coming here to be entertained. You’re coming here to be informed, inspired, and motivated to change yourself and those around you with a greater respect for nature,” Sylvia Earle told me, her words a clarion call for all Antarctic voyages to put science at their heart.
AE Expeditions offer a 12-day voyage to The Antarctic Peninsula onboard the Sylvia Earle. Various dates are available during Winter 2023/24
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