80 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2020I
f you book a cruise to the Antarc-
tic Peninsula today, you will see
ice floes loaded with the expected
penguins and seals, situated in a land-
scape that appears to be a pristine
blank. The region seems to erase its
own edges from the map, sending up
a shroud of mist at the boundaries
where the sun-warmed South Seas
meet the icy waters of the Southern
Ocean, which flows continuously
around Antarctica and drives the sur-
prising profusion of life on its shores.
Changes to this environment are dif-ficult to discern unless you know its
history. For both scientists and histo-
rians, discovering what the Antarctic
was like before humans altered it
means piecing together much frag-
mentary data, stashed in the archives
of many countries.
To the environmental historian Joy
McCann, who grew up on the south-
ern coast of Australia, the Southern
Ocean is familiar yet “wild and elu-
sive ... a difficult ocean to pin down.”
Her new book, Wild Sea, is a sensitive
portrait of a complex ecosystem, from
krill to blue whales, and of the ice,
winds, and currents that are critical to
the circulation of the world’s oceans.Drawing on ships’ logs, captains’ dia-
ries, scientific reports, and correspon-
dence, McCann also gives a meticulous
accounting of the effects of human
involvement in the Antarctic over the
past two hundred years, as scientific
research rushed to keep pace with its
breathtaking exploitation.
The ecological havoc wrought by
sealing, whaling, and fishing in the
Southern Ocean hasn’t dispelled
the myths of the region as a last
frontier of wilderness and limitless
marine abundance. But although
the Antarctic is even more remote
in the mind than it is in distance,
the effects of climate change there
will be globally felt.V
arious tribes have made their
homes on the Southern Ocean’s
northern shores for thousands
of years, along the tip of South Ameri-
ca, and in New Zealand, where the
Maori considered whales their guides
between the islands of the South Pa-
cific. But the ocean lay beyond the
reach of European sailors until the sev-
enteenth century, when merchants
sought new trade routes that forced
them into the uncharted waters around
the great capes. James Cook was the
first European explorer to circumnavi-
gate the Southern Ocean, on a ship
called the Endeavour, discovering that
its main current flowed clockwise con-
tinuously around the pole. His overt
mission on his first voyage, in 1768, was
to measure the transit of Venus, but it
was also an excuse to claim territory for
the British crown. The greatest prize
was not the islands that Cook encoun-
tered in the South Pacific, but the Great
Southern Land that philosophers sup-
posed must exist at the South Pole to
counterbalance the weight of the other
continents. Alexander Dalrymple, the
first hydrographer for the British Admi-
ralty, was obsessed with finding Terra
Australis Incognita, estimating that it
must have fifty million inhabitants.
McCann writes that, “under Cook’s
command, the ambitions of science and
empire seamlessly converged.” Johann
Reinhold Forster, the irascible natural-
ist on Cook’s second voyage, aboard the
Resolution, had departed En gland with
a blessing from Linnaeus that “the eyes
and minds of all botanists” were turned
toward his findings in the Antarctic.A VIEW TO A KRILL
The first history of the most remote ocean
By Lucy Jakub
Discussed in this essay:Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean, by Joy McCann. University of
Chicago Press. 256 pages. $28.
The Curious Life of Krill: A Conservation Story from the Bottom of the World, by
Stephen Nicol. Island Press. 216 pages. $30.
Vanishing Fish: Shifting Baselines and the Future of Global Fisheries, by Daniel
Pauly, foreword by Jennifer Jacquet. Greystone Books. 304 pages. $29.95.Lucy Jakub is a master’s student at the Grad-
uate Program in Science Writing at MIT.Chart by Joseph Gilbert showing the path of Captain Cook’s second voyage to the Southern Ocean,
from 1772 to 1775. From The Sea Journal: Seafarers’ Sketchbooks, by Huw Lewis-Jones, which will be
published in May by Chronicle Books. Courtesy the U.K. Hydrographic Office, Taunton, England