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HISTORY OF BIG SUR COAST

  A new dawn:              Locals had long called for a road along the coast to aid shipwreck victims and improve access to isolated communities.  Construction started in 1919, and 18 years, 32 tonnes of dynamite and 33 bridges later, the Big Sur stretch of California Highway One was complete.               The implausible route, with its myriad twists and turns and dramatic drop-offs, became an instant classic.  The author and painter Henry Miller fled to Big Sur in 1944 and stayed for nearly two decades.  Photographer Edward Weston and Beat Generation bard Jack Kerouac fell under its spell.  By the late 1960’s San Francisco’s counterculture revolution had swept down to Big Sur, and the likes of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell performed on the cliff tops.              ...
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ANTARCTIC PENINSULA

 

Island wildlife:

Antarctic Peninsula

                The many accessible islands on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula are packed with wildlife.  The islands have chinstrap, gentoo and Adelie penguin rookeries, as well as nest sites for kelp gulls, Antarctic skuas, fulmars, blue-eyed shags and petrels.  Weddell and crab- eater seals haul out on beaches and ice floes, and leopard seals, armed with powerful jaws, hunt penguins close to shore.  Offshore, pods of killer whales search for seals they can tip from ice floes, and humpback, minke and fin whales feed on enormous swarms of shrimp – like krill.

                  It is so cold for most of the year that only two plucky flowering plants grow here, mainly on the western side of Peninsula.  One is a scruffy, hardy hair grass, and the other is a pearlwort, a cushion – shaped plant that hugs the ground and produces very small whitish flowers in summer.  Primitive plant-like organisms that resist cold and desiccation, such as mosses, liverworts, lichens and algae, make up the rest of the flora.

                   Although there is a  wealth of animal life in the waters around the peninsula, and penguins breed here in their thousands, none of these species live on the peninsula all year around.  The biggest resident land animal is a flightless midge about 12mm (1/2 in) long, and the top land predator is a tiny mite, no bigger than a pinhead, that feeds on spring tails.  Many of the fauna species produce their own antifreeze to survive the Antarctic winter.

Location: Kiev Peninsula, Antarctica

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