Escape to Antarctica with Researcher & Photographer Drew Spacht
I’m in Antarctica.
Antarctica. Antarctica. Antarctica.
Saying it out loud three times hardly makes it seem any more real, but much like Beetlejuice, *poof* there it is. And it’s stunning, breathtaking, expansive, a bit chilly, (sometimes) lonely, and lifechanging. This place haunts every corner of my mind and my heart. I know I’ll never escape, though I don’t think I want to.
I’m a scientist, studying an insect (yep, we have one here); a flightless midge known as Belgica antarctica. You have to be tough to live here year-round, and these little buggers are just that: tough as nails. You can freeze them, dehydrate them to the point of losing 70% of their weight, toss them in seawater, take away their oxygen, and even throw them in acid that will rot your teeth (think Coke) - they just shrug it off. It’s because of them that I came down here to Palmer Station, Antarctica the first time in January of 2016, and they’re why I returned here in December later that year.
I knew going into my lab at The Ohio State Univeristy that there was a chance of coming down, but honestly I was under the impression that the chances were pretty slim. My advisor was going to retire soon, and I’d probably have to find another lab after completing my masters degree with him. One day he called me into his office, and with no small talk or lead-in he shot, “How would you like to go to Antarctica?” How would I like it? The words “very much” left my mouth before I could even process what had just been asked of me. Walking out, I knew I needed a camera.
Our trip was delayed a year, which was convenient in the sense that I now had plenty of time to acquire gear and to research cameras. I had no intention of using the camera for anything other than documenting, but growing up with a mother who really enjoyed photography impressed upon me that I needed a DSLR. In the end, the camera is just a tool, but hell if I knew that when it first met my hands. I got a reliable Pentax for Christmas, just about week before I was due to head south. I had no idea how to use it.
I won’t dive into what my first 2000 or so photos were like; let’s just imagine all of them as being somewhere between “meh” and “were you drunk?”. It wasn’t until I saw my first real iceberg, a behemoth towering over a hundred feet tall, that I finally started to get a feel for what I was doing. I started noticing details, and by some luck ( and with a little guidance from my friend JD) I had the settings just right. Picking out details in a vast landscape is where I first noticed some degree of talent for photography, where people first started saying “wow, I didn’t notice that”. Composition didn’t come to me until the last 4 weeks of my trip. I remember the exact piece of ice I photographed where everything crystallized for me, so to speak. This is where I fell in love with photography as an art.
Just as photography started to really light a fire inside me, it was time to come home. Coming back from epic mountains and surreal ice to the flatlands of central Ohio was jarring. I felt as though my eye was robbed from me, like it had been plucked from my creative mind by a vulture with no care for the fact that I’m still alive and feeling. How does one go from such grandeur to agricultural Americana? My girlfriend pushed me to never stop creating. So I did just that: I started shooting all the time. I picked up my camera and learned it inside and out, ate up art like a ravenous leopard seal, and challenged myself to dive into the foregone medium of film. She helped me realize that it’s about always playing. She set me up for my second trip, which is where I am now as I write this.
It’s hostile here, and cold, but the beauty is beyond compare. Mountains erupt from the sea and puncture the clouds, the colors and ice steal the breath from your lungs, and the wildlife is innocent and intensely inquisitive. It is truly a photographer’s paradise. I remember my first experience with an Adélie penguin, about a week after arriving during my first expedition; I was photographing some nesting penguins and fawning over how adorable the parents and chicks were. When I pulled the camera away from my eye, I noticed that one of them had somehow snuck up on me while I was snapping away, just a few feet in front of me! It gave me a once over and cocked its head, perhaps drawn in by the glint of my lens. I shifted slightly to get more comfortable, which must have startled the little bird, because it suddenly whipped around and waddled speedily off back towards the colony.
That wasn’t even my most amazing encounter with wildlife down here. Every Austral Summer (winter in the Northern Hemisphere), thousands of humpback whales make their way down to Antarctica to take advantage of the rich feeding grounds that crop up here year after hear. My first season was disappointing when it came to whales - not a single one until the last week I was down here. Imagine my intense joy coming down here for a second time to be greeted by what seemed like all the humpback whales on the planet. Obviously, that is a huge exaggeration, but to see whales day after day when you had only seen 10 or so individuals the prior year is truly magical. And it was made even more special by our New Years Day experience.
At around 10:30am on January 1, 2017, we had whales pop up in the inlet right next to our station. Immediately everyone shot to the windows to watch our New Years visitors. JD, my friend and colleague, hopped into a zodiac with me (an inflatable, military-style motorboat) so we could photograph them from the water. For about an hour we watched them bubble net feed in the harbor near station. Bubble net feeding is this amazing feeding behavior where whales blow a ring of bubbles around their prey, in this case Antarctic krill, which corrals them into small, bite-sized clusters of deliciousness. For hours the whales were doing this while we were out on the water watching, and then it suddenly stopped. Minutes creeped by and we thought the whales had finally left.
*Bloop*
*Bloop bloop*
Bubbles broke at the surface around our boat, just a meter or two away. Suddenly, a ring of bubbles started to form around us. We looked at each other, cursed in excitement and nervousness, and killed the engine - we were in a bubble net! The lazy ring started to tighten up around our boat, and then it closed in to its smallest diameter just off to the side of our boat. Less than three meters away the whales surfaced, sucking in massive quantities of air with a WHOOSH reminiscent of an inner tube. We could hardly believe how close these whales came to us, and it was incredible to think about how such large animals could sneak up on two people.
Moments like the one with the whales are surprisingly common in Antarctica. Everything down here is either curious or naïve, and the animals make it a point to inspect anything new. The continent itself also seems really intent on leaving some sort of impression on visitors, be it through wildlife or the unrelenting beauty of the landscapes and ice formations. I’ll never forget my trips through the Neumayer Channel. On either side, mountains dominate the landscape and glaciers plunge precipitously into the sea. There are reflections so perfect that the only indication of the original is the fact that there are little chunks of brash ice floating in the water that give away the duplicate.
Coming down here, I understand all too clearly how and why so many have fallen in love with this place; it’s so easy to become drunk on beauty when you’re consuming it every second of every day.
And so how could I not find a passion for photography in such a place? The physical adventure is certainly not as dangerous as the early continental explorers experienced, but the adventure of self is still there and there still is a periodic sense of danger. For me, words were always a clumsy tool, a cudgel of sorts in the hands of an unskilled laborer. I had no idea a visual medium would work any better for me, but the second I found I could make people feel something for the place that had so enchanted me I latched on and ran with it. I wish for nothing more than to have others hold a love for this place like I do, but at the same time I feel deeply protective of what I have discovered. Part of me wishes for as many people to see and experience Antarctica as possible, but at the same time I am strangely selfish and am glad that it is so inaccessible to much of the world. Photography is a way for me to reconcile these conflicting emotions - I can share Antarctica while ensuring its safety in some small way.
My parting message is this: there still is, and always will be, great beauty in this world, and it is important that we share and protect it. When you are presented with an opportunity to capture some of that beauty, take it. Take it and steal it away deep inside of you so that it becomes a part of who you are. Let it change you and let it trick you into taking risks. I came to Antarctica a scientist and I left a photographer and a storyteller - that’s my risk. My ultimate goal for my photography is to become a steward of our planet and inhabitants, be it on my own or with an organization such as National Geographic. I can’t be sure that it will work, but that’s part of the fun. In the end, it’s about taking uncertainty and making your reality apparent.
Please join me on the rest of my journey on Instagram (@spachtenator) and my website.
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We want to thank Drew Spacht for sharing his incredible experiences in Antarctica with us, both through his intriguing article and breath-taking photographs.