O il
The last continent
Molly Mortimer
Only in 1962 were the British Antarctic Territories created. This followed fast on the 1959 Antarctic Treaty of which Britain was one of the twelve signatories. The Falkland Island sell-out is not therefore a total sell-out to Argentina and Chilean claims, spurious though they are. For all that land lying south of latitude 60 is now a separate British Dependency — 600,000 square miles: South Georgia (the only inhabited area), South Sandwich, South Shetlands, South Orkney, Grahamland, with all adjacent islands and all the land-mass stretching to the South Pole. Whether or not a further Latin American claim will be made rests in the future; there is no basis for it.
The huge area is our gateway to the future and as undervalued as eighteenth-century Canada. For the Antarctic with all its known and suspected resources is the last hope for reasonable control. Already thick coal seams have been found in the transantarctic mountains in the New Zealand sector of Victoria land. And it was in Wellington last December, at a conference of Antarctic powers, that New Zealand voiced her concern for the conservation and control of this last continent's riches; over the exploitation of minerals, oil and marine life.
Nor is this so remote, as technical knowledge bounds ahead and the intrepid American tourist has already landed there. Apart from over forty permanent stations in the Antarctic, there is a continuous programme of research both national and cooperative. Four major combined surveys were carried out in 1972. First, a study of the three volcanic eruptions since 1967, which wrecked British and Chilean stations on Deception Island; second, a dry valley drilling operation near
McMurdoe sound, by Japan, the US and New Zealand; third, an ice survey of the East Antarctic (reckoned to hold 80 per cent of the world's total freshwater supply) by France,
the US, USSR and Australia; and fourth, a six-nation attempt to drill through the ice sheet reckoned at maximum, 14.9 thousand feet.
The Antarctic has been unrivalled as a scientific laboratory where idealism and adventure have been seen at their best. As a Political laboratory the problems are now beginning and an only too familiar pattern is emerging. The US still has the most permanent stations, seven, with about 200 scientists and 2,000 technicians and other personnel. The USSR (which has never technically recognised anybody else's rights) claims six Permanent stations, the most famous perhaps the Molodezhnay of the Institute of Polar Medicine in McRobertson Land. Each has the only permanent inland station: the Amundsen Scott and Vostok. Britain has only one permanent station at Halley Bay; Norway and Belgium have closed theirs and co-operate With South Africa at Sanae in Queen IVIauds Land and with bases controlled by Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.
It seems a far cry from the hot deserts of Arabia but it is Arab oil which is likely to crack the Southern idyll. And that nasty state of undeclared war in which we all live today seems likely to spread to the last continent unspoiled by man.
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