I’ll never forget the sounds of the rain. It slapped the rocks and birds, raising and lowering its volume with the howling gusts of wind. It gurgled as it ran free-flowing down the exposed ground of the gentoo penguin colony, encircling nests like islands in a stream as the birds waddled through mud and puddles, squelching and sloshing. And behind all of that were the voices of gentoo penguins—the raucous, full-body calls of the adults and the thin, high-pitched peeping of the chicks—at times nearly drowned out by the storm.
This was Feb. 10, 2023, in Paradise Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula, a place that is warming faster than any place on the planet. I was there filming and photographing as part of my decades-long effort to help protect the Southern Ocean. One consequence of that rapid warming is increased precipitation—rain in mid-summer, snow in spring and early summer.
And though this year’s early snows had finally melted, they remained at the center of the horror now playing out in front of me: Because the colony had been covered in snow, the gentoos put off nesting for several months. Normally, the birds lay eggs in late November or early December.
Chicks should be close to fledging in February. In many of these nests, however, parents huddled over week-old chicks, and even unhatched eggs. Some birds performed pre-breeding rituals over empty nests. The colony’s entire breeding cycle had been crammed into the last few months of the Antarctic summer, and I knew that most of these underdeveloped chicks had been born only to die. And on top of that was the rain. Week-old chicks were soaked and shivering, their down matted to their bodies, obviously exhausted from the extra stress of wet cold.
Since the Long Term Ecological Research Program at the U.S. Antarctic base Palmer Station started collecting data in 1991, Adélie penguin populations in that region of the peninsula have declined by more than 90%. Adélies are more specific in their needs than gentoos, particularly for sea ice, which has all but disappeared on the peninsula. During that same time, gentoos, which prefer less sea ice, have expanded by 300%. But I can only imagine, having watched the slow-motion demise of the Paradise Bay gentoos, that the increasingly frequent climate and weather extremes may soon threaten even this highly adaptive species.
At a certain point I had to stop filming; I couldn’t focus the camera through my tears. Antarctica is in the midst of rapid, devastating change. Other signs were all around—in the textures of the eroding ice, glaciers turning pink because of algal blooms driven by rising temperatures, the meltwater tumbling over rocks from every glacier. But it is not this story or those tears that must define our outlook on Antarctica. Instead, we must look back at 2016 and into an obscure meeting in Hobart, Tasmania.
Every year in October, CCAMLR—the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the international organization charged with managing conservation and fisheries in the Southern Ocean—meets to hash out rules to govern the Southern Ocean. CCAMLR has 26 member states, and all its decisions must be unanimous. And at the beginning of the meeting in 2016, all but one member supported a proposal for the world’s largest marine protected area in the Ross Sea.
The commission had gotten that close to agreement through the concurrent efforts of hundreds of conservationists, scientists, and diplomats, who had built a global case for protecting the Ross Sea, and entrained advocates across the globe, including key world leaders. By 2016 I had devoted a dozen years of my professional life to this idea, alongside a lifetime’s cast of unsung heroes. And it all came to a head on Oct. 28, 2016, when, in the 11th hour and after intense and repeated high-level negotiations, the CCAMLR chair invited all the delegates back into the room. “It’s done,” he said. “We have agreement on a marine protected area in the Ross Sea.”
The room, packed with international diplomats, erupted in applause. People were laughing and cheering and crying and hugging. This was more than a massive win for Antarctica, and a massive win for our global ocean: This was also a peace treaty. I had been working on the Ross Sea for more than 10 years before I really understood what I was fighting for. That all became clear with the birth of my daughter, because the health of the Southern Ocean has implications for the health of the entire ocean, and for all of us who depend on it now and in the future. And what happened that day in Hobart gives me hope that if enough of us speak up and commit ourselves to making a better world for our children, then that is what we can achieve.
Today, much remains to be done for Antarctica. Three more marine protected areas have been proposed that would help secure a future for this fragile ecosystem. CCAMLR has the difficult task of building consensus among commission delegations, but I remain optimistic: The commission has shown that, despite very long odds, it can reach agreements to protect Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. I believe the delegates will recognize that they must do so again. This year’s tragedy on the Antarctic Peninsula adds to the ever-growing evidence that this environment is under siege, and only urgent action and science-based policy can save it. So now we must look forward, not at what we’ve already lost to climate change, but at how much we still have left to save.
John Weller, a 2009 Pew marine fellow, is an acclaimed photographer, filmmaker, and writer who has worked in defense of the ocean for nearly 20 years. Weller helped lead the global campaign to secure the world’s largest marine protected area in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, and is a senior fellow at the nonprofit Only One.