The South Atlantkj as Seen by Captain Larsen 



When Captain Carl Anton Larsen went to the Argentine at the turn 

 of the century to investigate the potential of the whale stocks in the 

 Si.uth Atlantic, he viewed the Antarctic as any of his more ancient Norse 

 uicestors would have done. However, he also surveyed the area as 

 a modern ecologist as well as a seaman and he appears to have done so 

 with extraordinary perspicacity. 



South of Tierra del Fuego lies a comparatively narrow ocean strait 

 named after Drake; beyond this the indented, island-girt coast of Gra- 

 ham Land juts northward from the antarctic continental mass. One 

 would naturally suppose that these narrows constituted the division be- 

 tween the Pacific and the South Atlantic Oceans, but this is not the case. 

 Due either to the fact that the world tides originate on the Pacific side 

 of these narrows and then flood through to the east in endless succession, 

 or to the fact that the Americas have been slipping or drifting to the 

 west, as the geomorphologist Wegener has suggested, there is a wild 

 geographical distortion off the tip of South America. The Pacific bulges 

 through into the South Atlantic and the bulge is ringed with shallows, 

 reefs, isolated rocks, and islands. Within these is a comparatively shallow 

 area named the Scotia Sea, and this has a unique physical make-up. Other 

 notable geographical features of the area are the vast continental shelf off 

 the east coast of Patagonia and the enormous sea of pack ice beyond the 

 Scotia Sea which chokes the Weddell Sea and extends to the Antarctic. 



Captain Larsen perceived that the best whaling grounds were around 

 the southern edge of the Scotia Sea, thence east towards Bouvet Island, 

 and on into the southern Indian Ocean. The best places to set up bases 

 for whaling operations were, first, in the Falklands, to process those from 

 the Argentine Basin, second, on South Georgia for those from the Scotia 

 Sea, and, third, on the South Sandwich Islands for the Atlantic Antarc- 

 tic Basin fishing. Captain Larsen's primary concern was rorquals, and 

 of these the blues and finners migrated annually north and south from 

 the pack ice to the open southern oceans. The humpbacks were strung 

 out along the edges of the continental shelves. The distribution of a num- 

 ber of hitherto unimportant little island groups thus became of para- 

 mount importance, and their positions vis-a-vis the confirmation of the 

 continental shelves almost equally vital. With modern steam whalers the 

 matters of ice, currents, and even of winds took secondary places. 



