Going with the Floes

Abstract

I can see the Southern Ocean from my kitchen window in the south of Tasmania, Australia’s island state. This vast tract of water stretches some three thousand unbroken kilometers (roughly two thousand miles) from the local beach to the icy shores of Antarctica. In summer, icebreakers sail south past my windows on voyages that will take them well over a week to reach their destination. If I am lucky, I can see the great ocean wanderers—whales and albatrosses—that are visiting Tasmania as part of their annual winter migrations from polar waters.

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

—Joseph Conrad, The Rescue