Fedor Konyukhov at a one-person Antarctic station. Photo provided by the “Sea Practice” company
Fedor Konyukhov’s expedition to Antarctica ended on March 13. The famous Russian traveler spent 111 days at the first one-person station in the history of the Southern Continent. During the expedition, Fedor Konyukhov investigated the problem of plastic pollution, conducted meteorological observations, and painted.
Smolensk Island (Livingston), on which the one-person tent station was deployed, was discovered in 1819 by the English navigator William Smith. It is the second largest island in the South Shetland Islands archipelago. In 1821, the southern coast of the island was mapped by an Antarctic expedition led by Faddey Bellingshausen. He gave the island the Russian name Smolensk in honor of the Smolensk Battle of the Patriotic War of 1812. The Russian «Bellingshausen» station (King George Island) operates on the South Shetland Islands. The Bulgarian «St. Clement of Ohrid» station, the Spanish Juan Carlos I and Camp Bayers stations, the British Station P, and the joint American-Chilean Shirreff station operate on the island of Smolensk (Livingston).
Late in the evening on March 12 (the next day had already arrived in Moscow), the dismantling of the one-person station was completed. «It’s sad to leave this island, I’ve become close to it,» Fedor Konyukhov wrote on his Telegram channel. According to him, this is the greenest (in terms of vegetation) and the most densely populated (by marine mammals) island of the archipelago, and therefore the most interesting for scientific observations. The tent camp was located on the south side of the island, near a cliff at Elephant Point, named for the abundance of elephant seals, the largest mammals in the seal family. The Russian traveler made friends with them, the animals let the person get very close. And another representative of the local fauna, Vasily the penguin, became a «model» and appeared in several canvases painted by Fedor Konyukhov. It is planned that the paintings created on the island of Smolensk will become the central part of a new exhibition.
Vasily the penguin. Photo: Fedor Konyukhov
During the expedition, the famous traveler studied the island itself in detail, compiled a summer wind rose which will help future researchers. He noted the unusually strong winds. They blow for weeks, with short breaks, sometimes reaching gusts of 45 knots per hour. And this is during the warmest and calmest season in Antarctica. Konyukhov believes that in winter the wind speed can reach more than 70 knots per hour (about 130 km/h). On one of these windy days, on January 4, a rock collapsed near the camp — a fragment the size of a car separated from it and fell.
More than the vagaries of the weather, the traveler was surprised by the abundance of waste. Plastic containers have reached these remote places. Fedor Filippovich collected about 100 kg of such garbage.
«My assessment is that some of the plastic ends up in the ocean from fishing vessels, some from cruise ships, and some is brought from continents and islands,» Konyukhov said.
Photo: Fedor Konyukhov
But he was really struck by ordinary cigarette butts. During the operation of the one-person station alone, that is, for a little over a hundred days, about a thousand tourists from cruise ships and yachts landed on the island. «A man came to Antarctica, smoked, threw a cigarette butt into the rocks and went on board the ship. It is strange, incomprehensible, and disgusting to me that cigarette butts are lying on the coast of Antarctica,» wrote Fedor Filippovich. He also suggested erecting wooden decking that could protect the surface of the soil from being trampled, given that there are more and more tourists here every year and, as we can see, there are not fully conscientious individuals among them.
Konyukhov proposed to conduct an ecological expedition on the island next season and continue to involve tourists in this matter, so that they would benefit the Antarctic nature.
By the way, according to the regulations of activity in Antarctica, the traveler had to leave behind the site without traces of human presence. Therefore, the station was shut down for several days to take out everything, down to the last nail. Taking into account this aspect, as well as climatic features, Konyukhov proposed creating a seasonal station in the future in the form of a full-fledged autonomous module in the dimensions of a 20-foot container.
The current expedition to Antarctica was not the first for the famous traveler. On January 5, 1996, he reached the South Pole as a result of a fully autonomous hike. He had to take food, fuel for the kerosene stove, a tent, and equipment with him. Fedor Filippovich set off from Hercules Bay on November 8, 1995. The distance covered was 1,350 km and took 68 days. And after successfully reaching the South Pole, he made an ascent to the highest peak of Antarctica, the Vinson Massif.
According to Konyukhov’s observations, now almost every country that has stations in Antarctica is increasing its presence on the continent, expanding station areas, importing new residential units, and increasing the number of personnel. And Russia should not lag behind in this sense, especially since its envoys Faddey Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev discovered Antarctica 205 years ago. According to the traveler, a public-private partnership can be effective in this matter. This is exactly how the current expedition was carried out. «I continue to see this format of cooperation as promising, where the state is a strategic customer and regulator, and private companies carry out tasks,» he concluded.