Footsteps in virgin snow – An Antarctic expedition in the year of Covid.

Antarctic Ice Pilot (AIP) are proud, as well as relieved to report the successful completion, without any Covid infection or transmission, of the only expedition permitted and completed by the AAD to visit the Antarctic Peninsula during the southern Summer of 2020-2021. The project assets comprised two megayachts, with accompanying helicopters and submersibles, with a total of eighty-four crew, expedition staff and guests. While all commercial expedition ships cancelled their seasons, other private yachts were denied permits, borders and ports were closed down, we were able to convince national authorities to grant permits and the Chilean, Falkland Island and South Georgia governments to allow access through their borders for the expedition to proceed. Activities permitted included helicopter operations involving heli skiing, diving, mountaineering, and the use of the two submersibles.

Antarctic Ice Pilot was approached in December 2019 and signed a contract in early March 2020 for planning and permitting services. At this point we invited a number of IAATO members to tender for the provision of expedition services and that tender was won by Spirit of Sydney (SoS). Planning was similar to the two mega yacht expeditions AIP permitted and guided in 2018-2019, with the additional complication of managing the Covid situation. This required SoS and AIP to develop from scratch a manual describing a practical approach to how the expedition would manage the risk of Covid infection. The permit and Covid plan, with addendums took five months to write and covered the whole operation from before expedition/ships staff left for the southern hemisphere, to the weeks after the last remnants of the expedition returned home. The client’s physical and medical resources onboard including doctors and PCR testing facilities were key to the project being signed off by the respective governments.

For this year’s science project, we carried onboard Dr Tom Hart of Penguin Watch, who collected data from and serviced his large network of cameras on the peninsula in an important year for his multiyear data set. His project investigates the impact of climate change, fishing and tourism on penguin colonies. 2020-21 saw only 6 tourists (from our vessels) following the previous season’s 55,164. There was huge interest in Tom being able to collect this data as it could potentially answer the question: Does large scale tourism negatively impact penguin colonies? The science he accomplished in the two weeks onboard would normally have taken him 3 months to accomplish travelling on multiple vessels. In addition, Tom made the first ever full aerial count of penguins at Eden Rocks and Paulet Island.

As an expedition team our primary objective is for our clients to enjoy the white continent and to be educated about its significance in the natural world. We wish to create Antarctic ambassadors. I believe we fulfilled all the objectives indeed the client wrapped his arm around me as we walked across to his plane at KGI and told me that this was “the best experience of my life”. For all of us this was a once in a generation experience. The guides who go down each season will never experience again in their careers the pristine snow at traditionally busy landings, the ability to move freely from site to site and stay as long as we wished at a landing site. It was a privilege to be allowed on the continent given the circumstances affecting the rest of the world at the time. Something that was not lost on the guests, yacht crews and expedition staff.