After spending the last couple months in Australia around Sydney, Brisbane and exploring the Simpson desert, it’s time for me to head to New Caledonia!
Our time in Australia was the opportunity for us to maintain Pangaea, still suffering from its trip down to Antarctica. I also embarked a bunch of international journalists on an exciting trip in the great Australian outback, here are some pics!
Cape Town, South Africa – Mike Horn and his crew have finally left the V&A waterfront Marina onboard Mike’s sailing vessel Pangaea, to make their way south towards Antarctica, where Mike plans to cross the continent via the South Pole in under 4 months.
Mike and his crew expect a rough 2-week sail across the Southern Ocean before they meet Antarctica’s icy coasts. There, Mike will set foot onto land and begin the longest and most perilous leg of the Pole2Pole expedition to date: the solo and unsupported crossing of the Antarctica continent passing via the South Pole. Mike will undertake this crossing on skis, with the assistance of snow kites when the winds turn into his favour. This journey should see Mike over roughly 5’000 km of various terrains, which he aims to accomplish in the span of 3 to 4 months. Mike anticipates covering approximately 55km per day over 90 days.
Similar feats have been attempted and succeeded in the past, yet Mike’s overall itinerary is a never-done before adventure. When asked why he chose this specific route, Mike simply explains: “It is the longest, and it is never been done before! But the aim of this traverse is not to beat any world records. The aim is to draw attention to the fragile environment, and as an explorer, to extend my knowledge and discover the limits of human capabilities.” Mike also draws a strong parallel between this upcoming Antarctica crossing and his many climbing expeditions: “What I love about high altitude climbing is that the summit is only halfway, and that most often it is the way down the mountain that is most dangerous. My mountaineering experience made me rethink my goals. That is when I realised that I needed to change my perception: The aim should not be to reach the summit or the pole, these should simply be my halfway marks. The aim is to make it back home alive!”
Departing from sea level, close to the Russian station Novolazarevskaya, Mike will begin his traverse with a challenging walk up onto the Antarctica plateau (3000m). Pulling a 200kg sledge behind him, Mike will be transporting his equipment and food for the length of the adventure along with him. Mike’s daily meals include high-calorie snacks such as nuts and chocolate, and lyophilised food (Trek’n Eat) kindly supplied by Katadyn. In order to withstand the extreme temperatures (up to – 40˚C), Mike plans on consuming between 5000 and 7000 calories per day. Once onto the plateau, Mike will head straight towards the South Pole. During this time, Mike will hope for favorable winds to use his snow kites, which will allow him to cover large distances over short periods of time. With winds up to 300km/h, the ideal equipment had to be designed to ensure Mike’s safety. Specific kites were thus designed, as well as multifunctional ski boots, giving him the flexibility needed to walk, and the rigidity needed to kite.
On previous expeditions, Mike missed out on perfect weather opportunities and wasted a great amount of time setting up his tent in order to change his walking boots to his skiing boots. Dahu, a Swiss ski boot manufacturer, therefore created a prototype to be tested for the first time on the ice to help Mike save time. As for insulation, Swiss brands Mover and Babbuk paired up to develop a warm and breathable shoe insulation to fight the extreme cold. Swiss clothing brand Scott Sports has provided Mike with the rest of the clothing and equipment.
Once Mike makes it across, he will reach out to his crew who will then pick him up near the French Station Dumont d’Urville, his destination. Once the traverse completed, Mike and his crew will sail onwards to New Zealand where the next phases of the Pole2Pole expedition will unfold.
Throughout his journey, Mike will use satellite communications to update his team on the expedition’s progress, all of which will be shared on the www.mikehorn.com website and Mike’s social media channels. In partnership with Inkwell and The Red Bulletin, Mike will be broadcasting the next two months in a series of Facebook Live episodes. Once on the ice, Mike will be sending regular audio and photo updates via his Iridium satellite devices (GO and Extreme) and capturing imagery with his iPhone7 Plus and Moment Lens add-ons for exceptional mobile photography from Antarctica.
For more information about Pole2Pole, visit www.mikehorn.com and follow Mike Horn on Facebook, @mikehornexplorer on Instagram and @exploremikehorn on Twitter.
Understanding shark movement and location is a central component of effective conservation strategies. In many cases, policy makers have been unable to conserve threatened sharks due to the lack of appropriate data on shark movements and behaviours, data which tagging and tracking work can provide.
Two types of tags are primarily used: satellite and acoustic tags. The satellite tags are short-term data loggers that pop off the animal, float to the surface and transmit to a satellite. Acoustic tags are a long-term data collection option. They emit a series of pulses for up to 10 years, their pattern individually identifying each tag and therefore each shark. Tags are attached to the sharks usually with a tag pole when a shark swims near the surface in proximity to a research vessel.
You may be wondering if the tagging causes the sharks any pain. Many tags are attached on the fins, which have no nerve supply, and therefore do not harm the study subject. Scientists and engineers are constantly working together to improve tag performance, power, data acquisition, sensor capabilities, as well as reduce tag size, drag and improve animal welfare.
Sunday, 2 October 2016
The Pole2Pole Shark Project is underway! With the team all together, piled into the Mercedes Benz G-Wagons, we made our way from Pangaea along the Cape Peninsula to Fishhoek Beach, the home of the Shark Spotters.
Fishhoek was once a hotspot of white shark attacks in South Africa, but the the Shark Spotters pioneered environmentally-friendly and proactive methods for dealing with this issue. As opposed to lethal, expensive, and often ineffective shark culls as a response to shark bites, the Shark Spotters minimise the risk of a shark encounter by simply keeping watch on the ocean from the nearby mountains and clearing the waters when a shark poses a risk to swimmers.
Established in 2004 as a result of public pressure on the Western Cape Government, the Shark Spotters Programme employs 30 spotters to monitor the waters of surrounding beaches for shark activity. The team made their way up to one of the Shark Spotters huts which is raised 90m above the popular Muizenburg beach. The job requires extreme patience and in-depth knowledge on what to look for and what to do.
After a quick surf, we made our way back to Kalk Bay to visit the newly upgraded and highly interactive Save Our Seas Shark Education Centre. It was fantastic to see an organisation doing proactive marine conservation with local schools and we all learnt something new about shark species from around the world.
By Tim White and Mikhayla Bader
Climate change, inequality, the refugee crisis, debt, corruption, depression, pollution.
There is no shortage of crises and challenges that our world faces today – social, environmental and economic. Yet how many of truly understand these issues? How many of us learnt about the biggest challenges of our time through our formal education and developed the skills, abilities, mindsets, and heartsets required to tackle them?
Mandela so beautifully captured the vast untapped potential that exists within education when he said ‘education is the most powerful weapon with which we can change the world.’
Many of our current day education systems enable us to master academic concepts, secure test and examination scores to enable further education, but how many of our education systems place fostering empathy, creativity, collaboration, developing a connection with nature and all people, a core outcome?
I believe that we need to begin shifting the way we learn and rethinking our priorities. There are many examples to learn from around the world. Kaitiaki Collective is creating the world’s first bush school, where all education is learned with and through experiences with nature. Resources like Better World Ed enables us to teach empathy and talk about social and environmental issues in math classrooms. And we find pockets of schools embracing 21st century skills and values of education. How can bring these conversations front and centre in our classrooms?
And beyond the realms of formal education, we are all ultimately students and we are all educators too. How can each one us seek out information and experiences that will help us live more socially and environmentally conscious lives? And how can we through our everyday actions inspire the same of others?
By Shruthi Vijayakumar
Biodiversity encompasses the diversity of genes, species and ecosystems. It is vital in a number of ways including preserving the aesthetic value of the natural environment, contributing to human well-being through utilitarian values, maintaining the integrity of the environment through: maintaining CO2/O2 balance, regulating biochemical cycles, absorption and breakdown of pollutants, pathogens and waste materials, determining and regulating of the natural world climate, and as protective services, e.g. by acting as indicators of environmental changes.
The biosphere is being threatened by several phenomena that are the result of increasing human pressures on the planet. Declines in populations and extinction of species are caused by changing the Earth’s ecosystems to meet growing demands for food, fresh water, fuel, and by climate change. Today’s threats to species and ecosystems are caused by human mismanagement of biological resources often result of misguided economic policies, and pollution in addition to climate change and they’ve been recorded as the greatest threats of recent times.
Truth is, biodiversity is the foundation for human health. By securing the life-sustaining goods and services which biodiversity provides to us, the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity can provide significant benefits to our health. In contrast, the continuing loss of biodiversity on a global scale represents a direct threat to our health. Without a global environment that is healthy and capable of supporting a diversity of life, no human population can exist. This concept has been recently discussed as “One Health”.
By Andrea Lavarello
For many people, the image of a shark fin gliding along the ocean’s surface is sure to cause terror. With this project, our central goal is to help change the perception of sharks from one of fear to one of appreciation for the very tangible benefits that sharks provide our ecosystems and our economies.
Around the world, these conservation victories and perspective shifts have already been achieved by remarkable projects, but there remains much work to be done. One of the most stark examples of the importance of this perspective shift is in the life and work of Peter Benchley, the author of the screenplay Jaws. In 1975, Jaws broke international box office records as millions of people watched a movie about an overly aggressive, fictionalised shark. This movie has had lasting effects on ways we think about sharks. Overnight, millions of people suddenly feared sharks and fishermen began actively killing sharks around the world. Peter Benchley was shocked when he realised the harmful effects of negative shark portrayals, and from that point on he dedicated his career to shark conservation and education. Over the next 40 years, Peter was an outspoken and effective advocate for shark conservation. His legacy includes the annual Peter Benchley Ocean Awards, which supports ocean conservation leaders around the world.
In addition to the work of ocean advocates, recent scientific research has made it easier than ever to support shark conservation by reaffirming sharks as vital to our economic and ecological interests. Scientists have determined that global shark ecotourism brings in over $314 million annually, and that number is projected to double over the next 20 years! It is clear that sharks are worth much more alive than they are dead. Additionally, we’ve recently learned the risk of shark attacks is the lowest it has been in decades, contrary to the impression that can be given by sensational media reports. Through recognition and appreciation of these facts, we can see the importance of protecting these vital species.
by Tim White
Living life gets a new meaning only when you can exist by being who you are. To be free is and certainly will forever be one of the most desired needs of mankind. History has taught us allot of what we know today about the word freedom. The word freedom has nearly become an obscenity and is slowly disappearing like the morning fog. The question is the following: What price am I willing to pay to be able to live with a certain amount of freedom? And what will I do with the luxury of freedom if I could acquire it?! I guess the trick question is, how do you define being free?
The big dilemma of growing up is that we lose our dreams, with that we lose our freedom. The solution to the dilemma is very simple in theory: Grow older but keep on dreaming like a child.
My father told me that if your dreams don’t scare you, they are not big enough. How can man ever sleep, if his dreams keep on eluding him? Freedom often gets imprisoned in our mind purely by ourselves and how we think.
Action is the key word that liberates the mind. To be free, you need action.
We often speak about luxury as something we cannot afford. The new luxury in today’s world is freedom; it can be bought without a currency. We can buy freedom by changing the way we think! We often move from one situation to another, thinking we will have more time only to realise that we don’t. It is like having six of one or a half a dozen of another. One day will always have 24 hours and that’s the same for each human being on earth, we all have the same amount of time. How we use it is a different question.
Working with freedom, doing what you love, staying true to yourself, trying to do what you always wanted to do, reaching success or failure learning from it, is all forms of mental freedom. Take a moment to look at your life, find what ties you down, doing your best at what you do, start loving the hard and difficult moments, helps us to frees up our mind.
We should not always think that by having more time is the only form of freedom. Liberate yourself mentally take on challenges and responsibilities. It makes you feel good about yourself.
In short, enjoy being yourself and love what you do. It will make you happy, and a happy man is a free man.
When you have worked hard for what you want, and then acquire it, you often realise that you do not have enough time to use what you have acquired, that belief frustrates and imprisons us. The freedom of enjoying what we worked for, without the pleasure of the action of using it has the reverse effect of what we imagined it to be like when we started pursuing our pathway to freedom. We often say when I have this I will do that… and we find ourselves with no time to do the “that”, this is where the game changes in our mind.
Instead of thinking of only enjoying the action part we should enjoy the whole process of acquiring as well, in fact enjoy everything we do in the ideal situation. Certainly there will be different levels of enjoyment.
Live in the moment, do not always want to be somewhere else, it liberates your mind and adds to the happiness that makes us feel free! Be happy with who you are, rather than unhappy trying to be someone else or what others want you to be. Freedom can be summed up in 3 words. KEEP IT TRUE.
What does all of this blab about freedom have to do with the Pole2Pole expedition?
The answer to that question you can read above!
Mike Horn