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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

 

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Antarctic Peninsula


                    One of the peninsula’s delightful little surprises is the southernmost branch of the British Post Office at Port Lockroy on Goudier Island.  In summer, when it is manned on behalf of the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust, it attracts more than 6,000 visitors a year, which makes it the most popular stopping-off place for cruise ships in the Antarctic. On the beach is the skeleton of a giant fin whale, a species second only to the blue whale is size.  The skeleton is reconstructed every spring after the winter storms have demolished it, and it remains a sad remainder of a whaling industry that almost wiped out the world’s whale populations during the 20th Century.

Changing Habitats:

                        Climatic change is having an impact on the Peninsula’s penguins.  A colony of emperor penguins has been newly discovered on the sea ice at snow Hill Island on the eastern side of the peninsula, but a breeding colony on Emperor Island in Marguerite Bay, on the western side, has disappeared.  The western side of the peninsula is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet, with winter temperatures a massive 6C(10F) higher than just 50 years ago.  Penguin populations have decreased more than 50 percent in the last 30 years.  Scientists blame a reduction in their main food, krill.  These shrimp-like crustaceans graze on algae on the underside of sea ice in early spring, but with less ice there is less krill, and less krill means fewer penguins.

Location: Kiev Peninsula, Antarctica

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