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The greatest prize may be oil. In the 1972-73 season, the deep-sea drill ship Glomar Challenger found the hydrocarbons ethane, methane and ethylene in shallow sediments at the bottom of the Ross Sea. All three are regarded as indicators of oil. Since then one Gulf Oil executive has estimated that there may be 50 billion bbl. of oil under the ice-covered Weddell and Ross seas, comparable to Alaska's estimated reserves. At present, extracting it would be prohibitively expensive, but geologists are convinced that drilling may soon become technologically practical in Antarctica as well.
Ecologists wonder what an oil spill or blowout in the Antarctic might do to the fragile environment. But there are still larger questions: Who owns these resources and how could any rush to exploitation be regulated? Earlier in the century, seven nations laid claims to wedge-shaped slices of the Antarctic pie. Three of these claims, those of Chile, Argentina and Britain, overlap. Neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union has staked out any territory, nor does either country recognize anyone else's claim. For the time being at least, all territorial squabbling has been put in a sort of legal cold storage by a 1961 international pact called the Antarctic Treaty. Under its terms, the signatories—there are 14, including the U.S. and U.S.S.R.—pledged themselves to three key things: keeping Antarctica free of nuclear weapons, forbidding military activity, freely exchanging scientific information about the continent. Also implicit in the treaty is an agreement that no country will act unilaterally on its own claim.
But the treaty is subject to review. And as geologists find new evidence of the extent of Antarctic wealth, some countries are becoming increasingly vocal about asserting rights to any resources found within their territories or off their shores. These waters teem with krill—small, shrimplike protein-rich crustaceans that are being exploited not only by wintering whales, but by fleets of Soviet, Japanese, West German and Polish fishing boats.
Until now, the American interest has been primarily scientific. The U.S. maintains four stations, the largest a sprawling collection of huts and machines on Ross Island, overlooking McMurdo Sound, at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. Equipped with everything from bars to laundromats, it serves as the central depot for U.S. operations in Antarctica. During the southern summer, the McMurdo base has a population of more than 800 people. Most are support personnel, provided by the U.S. Navy and a private contractor, for the teams of scientists who descend upon Antarctica each year.
The scientific investigations range from learning more about the continent's effects on the world's climate to unraveling the physiological mystery of how animals like large-eyed Weddell seals survive so harsh a climate. But the scientists acknowledge that the allure of Antarctica is itself a powerful magnet. Says Geologist Edmund Stump of Arizona State University: "Walking over a ridge that no man has set foot on before produces a spell that eventually captures us all."