A history of exploration

For a long time, Antarctica was an unknown continent. In the 1400's and 1500's, Antarctica was just a hypothesis. So, at the time that Leonardo da Vinci and William Shakespeare were alive, nobody had seen Antarctica, but they thought it probably existed. It was referred to as Terra Australis Incognita (unknown southern land). Maps from the time show a rough outline of where they thought Antarctica was.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

People began taking ships further and further south to find this new continent. They encountered islands along the way, which they sometimes thought were attached to that southern continent. (They were wrong!) Some of the maps from that time are very funny!

Compare this map of Antarctica from 1616 (from the Princeton library) to the real one below. They didn't quite get it right!

The first historical record of humans seeing Antarctica in person is from the 1820's. (I say 'historical record' because it's quite possible that Polynesians from the South Pacific had discovered Antarctica well before the rest of the world, but it's hard to find written record of it.) These first sightings were from ships traveling to the coast of Antarctica. Humans didn't start walking around on land until the early 1900's. These explorers were like the astronauts of their time! They were traveling into a completely unknown land, far from the rest of civilization, and the only resources they had in these extreme conditions were what they packed with them. The idea of spending a year in Antarctica was similar to the way we think about spending a year on the International Space Station today. They faced dangerous conditions, and if they returned from their expedition alive, they were famous!

Much of the early human activity on the Antarctic Peninsula wasn't for science or prestige, though. Some of the first human inhabitants on the islands near Antarctica were sealers and whalers. (Those are people who hunt seals and whales for their fur, meat, and blubber.) A lot of whales and seals migrate to the ocean around Antarctica during the summer, because there are a lot of krill and phytoplankton to eat. That meant the hunters could make a lot of profit! King George Island, where we are working, was the base for a lot of seal hunting in the early 1800's and by the end of that century, the fur seals were almost entirely gone.  

Fur seals have returned to the region, after being over-hunted in the 1800's.

Then the whalers moved in during the early 1900's. Whaling was so busy that almost all of the world's whale species were hunted close to extinction! Less profits meant that a lot of the whalers left, and then of course it is now illegal to hunt whales or seals in Antarctica for profit. 

The whalers and sealers were the only inhabitants of King George Island until the 1940's when scientists arrived. Many of the places that were once whaling camps are now scientific research bases used by many different countries. In fact, whale bones are still lying around King George Island near the bases.

The spine and rib cage from a whale near Arktowski Station on King George Island.

Ecological succession even happens on skeletons! Moss growing and soil developing in a whale vertebra at Admiralty Bay on King George Island.

Today, only research bases remain on King George Island, and there are many from nations all over the world. It is only a place of scientific exploration and cooperation, not hunting! The bones remain as a reminder of the damage humans have caused in the past.

Want to know more about the history of King George Island, specifically? This article gives a nice summary!