South Georgia

Welcome to another planet. Its name is Antarctica, and it's not so far from where you live. Feel the salty spritz of the sea from the smack of a nearby whale tail, be dwarfed by white mountains and deafened by chattering penguin colonies, sail inside a restless volcano - you'll wonder who the genius was who thought up Antarctica.
Among the tiny islands scattered across the vast empty expanse of the Southern Ocean are earth's remotest islands. Inconsequential though they may appear, they are vital refuges for vast numbers of seals, penguins and other seabirds.
South Georgia is blessed with many fjords and fantastic wildlife breeding beaches. The South Orkneys are the site of two interesting stations, while ships often just cruise past Shag Rocks - but if there are whales, they're likely to linger.

• Great maps and brilliant colour images
• Expanded coverage of climate change and responsible travel
• Complete pre-trip planning information for visits by air, private yacht, cruise ship or resupply vessel
• New exciting feature on sailing a tall ship to Antarctica
• Informative wildlife chapter profiling penguins, seals, whales and birds

This 48 page booklet includes an amazing amount of information including key dates, exploration, Shackleton, geography, geology, glaciology, climate, marine life, plant life, penguins, birds etc.
Mainly colour photos with some B&W, photos on every page.
Cardboard/soft backing. Both inside covers have additional info including a map on the back inside cover.

Famous for their size and elegance in flight, albatrosses are familiar to anyone who has travelled through the southern oceans, and are a flagship family of conservation concern.
However, albatrosses are just one of several groups of 'pelagic' birds - those that visit land only to breed, and spend the rest of their lives far from the coast, soaring from ocean to ocean in a never-ending search for food.
Mysterious and graceful, these birds can present a formidable identification challenge to even the most experienced birder.
This book provides the answer - the first comprehensive guide to pelagic birds, the albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters, storm-petrels and diving petrels.

• A comprehensive guide to 137 species of pelagic seabirds, with subspecies and phases fully illustrated.
• Concise information opposite plates is designed for use in the field, with tips for identification at sea, at close range and over distance.
• Confusion species included on plates to assist accurate identification.
• Detailed species accounts include colour distribution maps for every species.

This new field guide is a complete and convenient reference to every species of Cetacean, Pinniped and Sirenian in the world, along with the Marine and Sea Otters and the Polar Bear.
Every species is illustrated with colour paintings and photographs, chosen to illustrate the key field marks which can be used to separate each species in the field.
The author's unique depth of experience and knowledge, coupled with the artist's unrivalled skill, have come together to produce a neat, practical field guide that will enable any observer to quickly identify any mammals they may encounter at sea.

• All 129 species illustrated with over 500 beautiful new artworks
• Easily confused species are also shown together on comparison plates
• Over 475 stunning colour photographs
• Informative, up-to-date species distribution maps, including viewing hotspots
• includes a useful guide to some of the best marine mamal watching sites

Als kind ontdekte Eerde Beulakker dat dagdromen het gewone bestaan ruimschoots in schoonheid overtreft.
Op een dag stapte Hedwig van den Brink aan boord, vol reiservaring, onrusten en op zoek naar het ongewone. De plannen voor een verre tocht waren snel gesmeed.
De auteur en zijn vrouw zeilden gedurende een ijzige winter kriskras door de Falklandarchipel. Ze troffen er een half miljoen schapen en tachtig gezinnen, die alles haatten wat Argentijns was.
Onder in de zuidpunt van Zuid-Amerika voer het Nederlandse zeiljacht langs de gletsjerkusten van het fameuze Beagle Canal en zette de bemanning zowel voet aan wal te Ushuaia, de zuidelijkste stad van de wereld, als op Isla Hornos met het klif Kaap Hoorn.
Op 21 december 1991, de eerste zomerdag van het zuidelijk halfrond, zeilde het Hollandse koppel, nu in gezelschap van een Engelse zeiler-arts, Antarctica binnen. Het leek op het openen van het deksel van een vrieskist. Wetenschappers, pinguïns en toeristen volgden elkaar in de sneeuw met argusogen.
Toen kwam de ultieme realisatie van kinderlijk dagdromen. Het jacht Teake Hadewych volgde tot in details het kielzog van Sir Ernest Shackleton, de Britse ontdekkingsreiziger die in 1916 van Elephant Island naar South Georgia zeilde in een sloepje, zevenhonderd mijl over de onbekende Scotia Sea, om na een jammerlijk mislukte expeditie hulp te halen.
Eerde, Hedwig en Richard identificeerden zich te midden van ijs en kou wekenlang met hun antiheld en bereikten het eiland South Georgia - waarmee ze tevens het gruwelijkste slagveld qua walvisuitroeiing betraden.
Op weg naar huis werd in de oceaan tegen het vulkaaneiland Tristan da Cunha geankerd en thee gedronken bij afstammelingen van de Katwijker visser Pieter Groen, voor wie de bewoonde wereld op vierduizend kilometer afstand ligt.

Nederland heeft zich nooit veel aan de Zuidpool gelegen laten liggen. Er is weliswaar een vaste kern van poolonderzoekers, maar daar merkt het publiek niet veel van.
In de jaren '80 kwam daar verandering in omdat Nederland stemrecht wilde in het Antarctische Verdrag.
Hierdoor kon Albert Beintema tweemaal op reis. De zomer van 1988-1989 bracht hij met een Nederlandse collega en zes Brazilianen door op Shackletons legendarische Elephant Island, en in 1990-1991 nam hij deel aan de Nederlandse Antartica Expeditie.
Hij bestudeerde pinguïns en keek ook naar zijn medemensen. Op vaak humoristische wijze beschrijft hij het dagelijkse leven op en om de bases, maar ook de serieuze kanten van het onderzoekswerk, de stank van pinguïns en zeeolifanten en de schoonheid van de Zuid Shetlandeilanden, Zuid Paragonië en Vuurland.

Albert Beintema werkte als ecoloog bij het Instituut voor Bos- en Natuuronderzoek en schreef een proefschrift over de Nederlandse weidevogels. Hij volgde de trek van de grutto's naar Afrika.
Zijn passie voor vreemde eilanden bracht hem tot op het verre tristan da Cunha.

An account of one couple's life on a remote island beyond the Polar Front, a tale to rival the exploits of the great nineteenth-century explorers.
After twenty-five years of cruising the world's oceans, renowned blue-water sailors Pauline and Tim Carr found themselves being drawn to the lonely places of the higher latitudes to experience earth's last, scarcely touched regions.
Antarctic Oasis records the culmination of those exploits. True adventurers, the Carrs have lived year-round on South Georgia for five years--its only civilian inhabitants--experiencing a way of life that has all but vanished from our modern world.
A center of the Norwegian whaling industry in the last century, today a remnant of the far-flung British Empire, South Georgia is a splendid if forbidding land of towering, glacier-clad mountains and a treacherous, storm-torn coast punctuated by sheltered bays.
During its brief polar summer, the island's verdant shoreline offers Antarctic wildlife a place to feed, mate, and rear their young. The only humans on the scene, the Carrs have learned intimate details about the lives of whales, penguins, seals, albatrosses, skuas, and many others. In all seasons the Carrs explore South Georgia's uncompromising coast aboard their yacht Curlew. Their deep fascination with the island, its wildlife, and its history will stir the spirit of adventure and discovery in us all.

Shackleton is not a biopic of the great Anglo-Irish explorer but a dramatization of the failed trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914-1916.
As written and directed by Charles Sturridge, the production, filmed on real ice floes in Greenland, stays remarkably close to the facts, capturing the look of the surviving expedition photos by Frank Hurley (collected in the book South with Endurance) with great fidelity.
Kenneth Branagh makes no attempt at an authentic accent but otherwise gives a powerful impression of a most commanding personality.
When the expedition ship Endurance became locked in the Antarctic ice, Shackleton vowed to bring every man home alive, and against virtually impossible odds, including a 700-mile journey in an open boat through some of the worst seas in the world, he did just that.
This superlative miniseries realizes the story with production values and cinematography that would not disgrace a big-budget feature. Intense physical drama, strong performances, and Adrian Johnston's fine score combine here to deeply moving effect, marred only a little by a rushed conclusion.
With Roland Huntford, author of the definitive Shackleton biography, as production advisor, this easily stands as the benchmark for all future comparable films.