At the foot of the high and steep mountain, biologist Harald Stein stands and looks at the pond that got its name because of its color and content: the “Oil Pond”.
black oil? In Antarctica?
He throws a stone into the water. Then we see it better.
– It’s full of rotten biomass.
We can clearly smell the stench when we got here. To the place marked Svartgrita on the map. 20-minute tracked drive over blue ice from Norwegian research station Troll. The last part is on foot.
– There aren’t many people here, then. Just coming here is so special, Steen says.
There are no tourists here. Very few of them have ever seen this space. No one searched for what we see around us.
Not yet.
Ewan Wakefield came here for the first time last year. It was completely random.
– I was in Antarctica in connection with another project I’m working on. I have been notified that I need to take a trip.
He stayed in the area for three or four hours. I made an impression.
– What I saw was completely incomprehensible to me. It was simply unreal.
– What I saw?
– I saw this black pond for the first time, which they said never freezes.
You’d be surprised, though, because the temperature here is always below freezing. Then he looked up the steep mountain, toward the sharp peaks behind the dam.
When I looked closely, I discovered that the mountainside was covered with the remains of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dead birds. Apparently from a very large colony of seabirds sometime in the past.
– I was really excited, but also a little confused. My head was full of questions.
“What happened here?” “Why did the birds go?” “when did this happen?”
With samples of dead birds in his bag, he returned to Durham University. No laboratory has such material under a microscope.
But Ewan Wakefield wanted to know more. After all, he had only brought with him the specimens he had been able to collect during a very short visit.
So he wanted to go back. To this mysterious place in the huge icy continent in the south. Get more answers.
About birds and climate.
And this year he’s back at his place again in “Dødens dal”. This time he had a classmate with him. They spent several days, conducting thorough investigations and systematically mapping the area.
They found that the bird colony should extend over an area of at least three to four kilometres.
Many samples were taken. Researchers have come a long way in analyzing the unique substance. Wakefield had never heard of such a town.
– It’s great to just see these birds, as they have been so well preserved all these years. Looks like they could have been 50 years old, not 50,000.
– 50,000?
– Yes, we discovered that birds were in the area between 43,000 and 53,000 years ago. We have used carbon dating, which is a method that helps us find out the age of organic materials.
Wakefield speaks enthusiastically about how important his discovery is.
– This was in the ice age. At that time, there was more ice, and it was much colder in Antarctica. So it’s interesting to be able to prove that birds were in the area at that time. These birds – the Antarctic petrels – lay their eggs directly on the ground or on mountain slopes. So there can be no ice here then.
Petrels feed on krill and fish that they find in the Southern Ocean. From the mountainous region of Dronning Maud Land, today it lies about 20 miles from the edge of the ice. Then the birds have to go even further over the sea, maybe another 20 miles, to get to the “food plate”.
But at that time there was more ice in the Southern Ocean and therefore a longer journey to the ice edge.
– How could the birds that lived in Antarctica at that time go out into the open sea to find food? This question may have arisen in the aftermath of the findings in Death Valley, Wakefield says.
He took samples that could give an answer as to whether the birds ate the same thing then as they do now.
We ask him to summarize the situation so far in the research work.
– I believe that the findings in Death Valley could become a very valuable archive containing large amounts of information that will be useful not only in terms of biology, but also for people trying to gain more knowledge about the climate in Antarctica. Something that will again be useful for understanding climate around the world.
Biologist Harald Stein looks around. As director of research at the Norwegian Polar Institute, he has seen much, both north and south of the world.
But this is not every day. he said carefully.
– It’s unbelievable to walk here, that is. Tens of thousands of years ago, there was a large bird life here. I see the remains of bones, I see feathers, here is a beak, a skull. It’s really amazing. It’s really amazing how this has been preserved through the ages.
He is glad that all this will now be thoroughly researched.
So Ewan Wakefield is the man who holds the key and can help solve the mystery in Death Valley. Biologist and Postdoctoral Researcher at Durham University.
We have three more questions we’d like to ask him.
– When and why did the birds disappear?
– It’s one of the things we’re trying to figure out, but it almost certainly has something to do with climate change. Specifically, it’s about something that’s hard to measure right now – the amount of snow on Earth.
He says that Antarctic warblers cannot lay their eggs on snow or ice. and that when there is too much snow, it is disastrous for nesting success.
– We believe that this place was abandoned because there was too much snow there, and as the climate got warmer, the birds moved to the mountainous regions in the south.
Why are there so many dead birds in the area?
– The short answer is that the birds may have died during several breeding seasons. It is common for a small percentage of adult birds, and a larger percentage of chicks, to die during the season. This may, among other things, be related to their lack of access food.
The Antarctic warbler also has a fearsome enemy in these mountainous regions, the southern jay. Both adult birds and chicks may have to pay with their lives if this bird is viciously attacked.
– that There could also be other reasons, such as more stringent weather conditions as a result of changes in climate, but that would only be speculation, he says. Wakefield.
Carcasses decompose very slowly due to the cold in Antarctica, he says, and over the years there have only been more and more dead birds here.
And it’s cold. Antarctica is the coldest continent on Earth. The temperature can drop to minus 40 in the middle of winter (ie when it’s summer in Norway).
– I took a picture where we see oil seeping out from a rocky fissure. Is this oil from birdseed after all these years?
– Yes, I think this comes from the birds. Oddly enough, oil comes out of the rocks, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t have a good explanation for that.
– And this puddle…which looks like a hard lump…
– It’s water, but it’s mostly oil. Antarctic kumquats are very fat, so they can keep warm. When they died, oil began seeping from their bodies into the pool. If there are bacteria, they break down the oil very slowly. It is amazing to see.
Graphics: Eirik Kirkaune / NRK
Graphics: Eirik Kirkaune / NRK
Thus Svartgryta is the name of this city. It is like a bowl. The pond, the mountains rising towards the sky, and the ice wall on the other side. Behind an endless glacier.
Mile after mile across Dronning Maud Land, it is about seven times larger than Norway and makes up one-sixth of Antarctica.
We come back one last time.
There is no sound to be heard in Death Valley.
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