Charting the Frozen Continent on Boing Boing

Boing Boing has a great feature up called Charting the Frozen Continent with great photos and a story. Check it out!

AntArctic

Elephant seal pup (c) Michael Poliza

Photographer Michael Poliza took on the enviable task of traveling to the poles to take a series of stunning photographs for his book ANTARCTIC, produced by teNeues Books (www.teneues.com), and we were fortunate enough to receive a copy to review. The book is hard to describe except to say that if you have functioning eyeballs you will like it. It includes page after page of breathtaking, funny, and even touching photographs of the animals and landscapes of the polar regions. You'll probably have to tear yourself away from pictures of king penguins fighting over a female, fur seal pups with the tips of their tongues impishly protruding from their mouths, and petrel feeding frenzies. The images make the case for conservation of polar regions far better than I ever could, particularly since the book's large size makes the images seem all the more close and personal. My favorite is the the two-page photo of the yawning elephant seal pup. Poliza has done an excellent job capturing the wide range of Antarctic imagery - from towering icebergs to mundane midday naps - with skill.

The best part is that if you tweet about one of the photos from the book, you could win a free copy! Go to http://teneues.com/poliza/contest/. The book is truly amazing and I only wish I could give one to everyone who doesn't see why we need to worry about such faraway places.

Creatures from the deep!

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) released some photos (click link to view) from a recent underwater survey of the West Antarctic continental shelf in the Bellingshausen Sea, one of the fastest warming areas on the planet. They obtained stunning images of sea lice, corals and crustaceans, including some species previously unknown to science. According to Dr. David Barnes, the lead scientist on the expedition, “Few people realise just how rich in biodiversity the Southern Ocean is – even a single trawl can reveal a fascinating array of weird and wonderful creatures as would be seen on a coral reef. These animals are potentially very good indicators of environmental change as many occur in the shallows, which are changing fast, but also in deeper water which will warm much less quickly. We can now begin to get a better understanding of how the ecosystem will adapt to change. Our research on species living in the waters surrounding the BAS Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula shows that some species are incredibly sensitive to temperature changes. Our new studies on the diverse range of marine creatures living in the deep waters of the Bellingshausen Sea will help us build a more complete picture of Antarctica’s marine biodiversity and give us an important baseline against which we can compare future impact on marine life.”

I am a firm believer in preserving nature for nature's sake. I think it's a major problem that people often can't be convinced to care about environmental protection unless there is a direct threat to humans. Sometimes you simply cannot quantify the harm in destroying an ecosystem other than to say that it is not likely that humans are the one species that can avoid the consequences of environmental damage. Or that since we don't completely understand how ecosystems work we probably can't innovate our way out of every crisis. But since some people need more concrete evidence, pictures like these do serve a useful purpose. They have a sort of whoa factor that reminds people that nature is still full of surprises. And making the public understand just what it is they lose when we lose biodiversity is an important first step to obtaining support for any number of protection measures.

Polar Obsession

A while back, NPR reported on the very cool new book by a photographer who has focused his work on the poles. It sounds as if he's endured some hardships over the course of his career - bear aggression, frostbite, the usual - but the result are stunning photos that Paul Nicklen hopes will motivate people to preserve these remote wildernesses.

The best reason to read the story or buy the book, though, may be the encounter Nicklen had with a female leopard seal who tried to befriend him by bringing him a series of penguins in various stages of, well, being alive in hopes that she could feed him. I think it was a little rude of him not to eat one, no? It's difficult to catch penguins underwater - they move pretty fast.

Antarctica: The Global Warning

Check out these stunning photos posted over on NPR's The Picture Show blog - Antarctica: The Global Warning.

They're from photographer Sebastian Copeland's book of the same title. Copeland went to Antarctica to take one specific picture for a global campaign raising awareness of global warming, but ended up taking enough pictures for an entire book. You can check out more of the photos here. Copeland published the book as a way of sharing with the world the beauty and fragility of the Antarctic. Even if few people get to visit the Antarctic, anyone can enjoy the stunning imagery in Copeland's book.