Lost Antarctica - James McClintock

Lost Antarctica

By James McClintock

  • Release Date: 2012-09-18
  • Genre: Environment
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 6 Ratings

Description

The bitter cold and three months a year without sunlight make Antarctica virtually uninhabitable for humans. Yet a world of extraordinary wildlife persists in these harsh conditions, including leopard seals, giant squid, 50-foot algae, sea spiders, coral, multicolored sea stars, and giant predatory worms. Now, as temperatures rise, this fragile ecosystem is under attack. In this closely observed account, one of the world's foremost experts on Antarctica gives us a highly original and distinctive look at a world that we're losing.

Reviews

  • Good Overview of Many Issues Facing Antarctica

    4
    By One Suitcase
    An enlightening memoir of several decades of a scientist on missions to Antarctica. Some basic and useful information for the first-time traveller to Antarctica, but I think the experienced Antarctica traveller would find much of this book too basic. Some odd expressions crept into McClintock’s writing that a competent editor would have caught: in discussing leopard seals, McClintock writes that ‘teeth are designed to tear and shred penguin and seal prey.’ (Teeth ‘evolved’, teeth are not ‘designed’); and in discussing crabeater seals, McClintock writes that ‘one of their most unique features is their dentition.’ Sorry, there no degrees of uniqueness.