Scramble on the Polar ice

By Frederic Golden

Conflicting claims could stir a battle for Antarctica's riches

It appears frozen in time, an icy world surrounded by frigid seas where winds of 100 m.p.h. are not uncommon. No human is known to have set foot upon it until the 19th century, and even today it exposes unwary travelers to the greatest dangers. Temperatures regularly plunge to --100DEG F or below. Giant crevasses can open in the ice, swallowing men and machines. Sudden storms often blend ground and sky into one snowy blur that hopelessly disorients the most skilled aviators.

During his doomed dash to the South Pole in 1912, British Explorer Robert Falcon Scott was right enough when he called it this "awful place." But Antarctica, half again as large as the continental U.S., is also a world of spectacular beauty. Beyond its great central plateau, where the ice is more than two miles thick, are towering mountains, volcanoes, and glaciers as big as Rhode Island that creep inexorably toward the sea at rates up to two miles a year. There are even curious, snow-free "dry valleys" where the winds have sculpted the rocks into a phantasmagoria of surreal shapes.

Though Antarctica gets less precipitation than the Sahara (less than 2 in. a year), nearly two-thirds of the world's fresh water is locked up in the polar icecap. Even bacteria are barely able to cling to life in the interior, but the coastal regions abound with seals and penguins, to say nothing of the whales that come from round the world to winter in Antarctica's icy, protein-rich waters.

This forbidding continent has lately become more than the testing ground for explorers in mukluks and wooden sledges. It is being eyed acutely for mineral wealth, once deemed far too difficult and expensive to mine. Geologists have already confirmed that it holds great quantities of iron and coal, including perhaps the world's largest coal field, running more than 1,500 miles along the Transantarctic Mountains. There are strong indications of other treasures as well. More than 200 million years ago, before the world's continents began their slow drift apart, Antarctica was attached to South America, Africa, India and Australia as part of a great landmass that scientists call Pangaea (Greek for whole earth). In strata similar to those of its long-separated continental cousins, Antarctica, like the tip of South America and southeastern Australia, may possess uranium.

During the six-month austral, or southern, summer, when the South Pole is bathed in sunlight 24 hours a day, geologists from the U.S., Australia and New Zealand explored the rocky mountains of Northern Victoria Land. They found signs of such valuable metals as tantalum and lithium, used for making high-strength alloys. The Dufek Massif in the Pensacola Mountains, similar to South Africa's Bushveld, may have platinum and chromium, both strategic metals.

The greatest prize may be oil. In the 1972-73 season, the deep-sea drill ship Glomar Challenger found the hydrocarbons ethane, methane and ethylene in shallow sediments at the bottom of the Ross Sea. All three are regarded as indicators of oil. Since then one Gulf Oil executive has estimated that there may be 50 billion bbl. of oil under the ice-covered Weddell and Ross seas, comparable to Alaska's estimated reserves. At present, extracting it would be prohibitively expensive, but geologists are convinced that drilling may soon become technologically practical in Antarctica as well.

Ecologists wonder what an oil spill or blowout in the Antarctic might do to the fragile environment. But there are still larger questions: Who owns these resources and how could any rush to exploitation be regulated? Earlier in the century, seven nations laid claims to wedge-shaped slices of the Antarctic pie. Three of these claims, those of Chile, Argentina and Britain, overlap. Neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union has staked out any territory, nor does either country recognize anyone else's claim. For the time being at least, all territorial squabbling has been put in a sort of legal cold storage by a 1961 international pact called the Antarctic Treaty. Under its terms, the signatories--there are 14, including the U.S. and U.S.S.R.--pledged themselves to three key things: keeping Antarctica free of nuclear weapons, forbidding military activity, freely exchanging scientific information about the continent. Also implicit in the treaty is an agreement that no country will act unilaterally on its own claim.

But the treaty is subject to review. And as geologists find new evidence of the extent of Antarctic wealth, some countries are becoming increasingly vocal about asserting rights to any resources found within their territories or off their shores. These waters teem with krill--small, shrimplike protein-rich crustaceans that are being exploited not only by wintering whales, but by fleets of Soviet, Japanese, West German and Polish fishing boats.

Until now, the American interest has been primarily scientific. The U.S. maintains four stations, the largest a sprawling collection of huts and machines on Ross Island, overlooking McMurdo Sound, at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. Equipped with everything from bars to laundromats, it serves as the central depot for U.S. operations in Antarctica. During the southern summer, the McMurdo base has a population of more than 800 people. Most are support personnel, provided by the U.S. Navy and a private contractor, for the teams of scientists who descend upon Antarctica each year.

The scientific investigations range from learning more about the continent's effects on the world's climate to unraveling the physiological mystery of how animals like large-eyed Weddell seals survive so harsh a climate. But the scientists acknowledge that the allure of Antarctica is itself a powerful magnet. Says Geologist Edmund Stump of Arizona State University: "Walking over a ridge that no man has set foot on before produces a spell that eventually captures us all."

The most intriguing American outpost is at the pole itself. Located under a giant geodesic dome, the station serves as an invaluable high-altitude (9,200 ft.) geophysical observatory. Because of the pristine quality of the air and the funnel-like shape of the earth's magnetic field at the antipodes, scientists are able to measure the amount of carbon dioxide and pollutants in the atmosphere and register the influx of cosmic rays from space (a hint of solar activity) with much greater ease than at any other place on the earth's surface. The station also acts as a laboratory for the study of human behavior in isolation. Last week the season's final flight took off from the pole. Left behind until November, when flights resume, were 17 people, including one visiting Soviet scientist, an atmospheric physicist. During the long polar night, radio will be their only contact with the outside world.

Though information gathered at the polar station is scientifically valuable and could even help doctors select and prepare the best possible crews for long space journeys, the reason for the American presence at the pole is as much geopolitical as geophysical. It gives the U.S. a unique toehold in all the Antarctic claims except the Norwegian, which stops short of the pole proper. Says Bernhard Lettau, polar oceanography manager for the National Science Foundation, which runs the U.S.'s $67.4 million-a-year Antarctic scientific effort: "The pole is highly symbolic. By being here we maintain our status as first among equals of the treaty nations and prevent the Soviets from grabbing our base."

That does not seem likely for the moment. But like other government agencies, NSF has been struck by the budget ax; for fiscal 1982, the Antarctic program has been effectively cut by 10%, curtailing scientific activity and delaying needed repairs at McMurdo. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union continues to expand its operations on the ice, with a total of seven research bases strategically scattered over nearly all of the claimed pie slices.

This disturbs U.S. officials. Says NSF Chief Polar Scientist Frank Williamson: "You can't tell me that a continent that occupies the whole bottom of the world isn't valuable. But our current investment here consists of six airplanes, seven helicopters and just over 1,000 people. It's minuscule compared to what we might be able to gain." From all the hints the Antarctic is giving, the list of possible gains is likely to keep growing. --By Frederic Golden. Reportedby David DeVoss/McMurdo Sound

With reporting by David DeVoss/McMurdo Sound

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