The Antarctic, as Seen from a Spaceship 



The last and current phase of whaling has carried the fleets into the 

 Antarctic itself. This is partly an extension of Captain Larsen's move- 

 ment to the Scotia Sea, and partly the outcome of his further pioneering 

 with floating factories in the ice fields themselves, beginning with his 

 experimental expedition to the Ross Sea from Tasmania in 1923. A lot 

 of exploration had been done in the Antarctic before the coming of the 

 whalers, but comparatively little was known about it prior to this event, 

 and even its coast line was for the most part a blank on our maps. This 

 latter is still not quite filled in, and there is no single pubUshed map show- 

 ing all the most recent discoveries, yet the general conformity of the 

 continental mass is now determined and has been compounded on this 

 map by Mr. Charles Ballentine, cartographer to the American Geographi- 

 cal Society. 



The most startling thing to emerge from this first general map of the 

 continent is not so much the lopsidedness of the outline of its land mass, 

 but its almost complete circularity when ice and land are taken together. 

 The only kink in this is the Ross Sea with its open water and the great 

 Ross Barrier, or Shelf Ice, that extends from this to within five degrees 

 of the South Pole. If there is a single cause for this great indentation, it 

 is not known, but the break in the ice may be the result of the con- 

 formity of the coast. 



The coasts of the Enderby Quadrant are the least known; those of the 

 Weddell Quadrant the best charted. Rorquals abound all around the 

 periphery of the ice and migrate outwards in all directions annually. 

 Sometimes they appear in unexpectedly great numbers and then just as 

 suddenly they seem to become scarce. That they retreat into open or 

 other suitable waters within the pack ice is certain, but just where these 

 places are and whether they are permanent or not is not yet known in 

 detail. Rorquals go to the Ross Sea, but sometimes they are extremely 

 scarce therein. 



Several large — in fact, vast — tracts of sea bordering the Antarctic have 

 been set aside by international agreement as reservations where whaUng 

 is not permitted. The modern whale fleets operate all round the conti- 

 nent, however, for a few months each southern summer. 



