Photo: Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters

“When I started paying attention to Nasheed’s presidency, I was struck by his willingness to say these brutally honest things about the global environment. His was a truly unique political story.

“A lightbulb went on in my head. Here was a chance to completely shift the conversation about climate change from something a lot of people consider boring or are powerless over—climate change—to a story with both inherent drama and a kind of hero.

Weeks later the San Francisco-based filmmaker—who was director of 2004’s Lost Boys of Sudan and was DP on the Academy Award-winning Smile Pinki—was face-to-face with the new president, attempting to convince Nasheed to be the subject of a David-versus-Goliath bio-doc.

Shenk asked for unprecedented fly-on-the-wall access to the president, his office, his travels, and backroom negotiations. Within three minutes after meeting, Nasheed agreed.

The filmmakers ultimately trailed the president across five continents, filming him 78 times, gaining backroom access to high-level climate-change negotiations at both the U.N. and Copenhagen’s international climate-change conference in November 2009, where the film ends.

But Shenk could not have predicted that just as his film was to be released across the country, Nasheed would be forced out of office by a coup d’état.

“Only later,” Shenk tells me on the eve of the nationwide opening of The Island President, “did he tell me he never thought we’d stick around as long as we did.”

As I talk to Shenk, he keeps his fingers tightly crossed, hopeful that among the film’s opening-night guests at New York’s Film Forum (on Wednesday) will be the now-ousted island president.

Jon Bowermaster/TakePart: What was your reaction when you heard President Nasheed had resigned, on February 7?

Jon Shenk: It was devastatingly sad news. I was immediately worried for his safety, and his family’s safety.

During our research I’d seen hours of [archival] footage of what is possible when people want to use force in the Maldives, and what we saw last month when he was forced out of office looked eerily similar to the protests he’d led during the fight for democracy days.

One of the first things he did when he was elected was to order all of that riot gear be put away. But as soon as he was deposed, all that stuff—batons, pepper spray, water cannons—came out of the closet.

Jon Bowermaster/TakePart: His deposing was amazing in how quickly it happened, a kind of reverse Arab Spring. You had a democratically elected president being forced out by allies of the dictator he had worked so hard to defeat.

Jon Shenk: It was spooky because late last year Nasheed had publicly cautioned activists in Egypt and Tunisia that just because you oust a dictator doesn’t mean it’s over. Sure enough, he became the victim of just that.

Jon Bowermaster/TakePart: Even with the incredible access you had to the president and his backroom meetings and strategy, was it difficult to film a sitting president?

Jon Shenk: Yes and no. While we had his cooperation, having one man’s cooperation in the Maldives did not mean it was all carte blanche. The Maldives is a country that had been traumatized, so people were wary of cooperating with us. These are people who had lived under a dictator, with people disappearing and constantly fearful of disappearing. We would ask questions about politics, and people would whisper back to us, looking around first before answering to make sure no one was listening.

I got the sense from the start that the shadow of the dictator had not gone away. At the time I thought that was absurd, that the dictator was never going to take power again. Of course, now I’ve been proven wrong: their fears were founded.

Jon Bowermaster/TakePart: As a journalist and human rights activist before being elected president, Nasheed had been imprisoned by his predecessor, held in solitary confinement, and tortured. He clearly is a big believer in transparency and a free press and has been very good at reaching out to the media. As president he vowed to make the Maldives the first carbon-neutral country and held an underwater cabinet meeting to illustrate the coming impacts of climate change on low-lying island nations. In your time with him would you consider him more activist…or politician?

“…what you see in the film is this journey, this guy trying to get something done that is so bloody hard, nearly impossible. And then to read at the end that he’s been deposed by his enemies—it’s like twisting the knife in.”

Jon Shenk: He’s been an activist for much of his life, a Martin Luther King/Gandhi-like figure. To put his own safety on the line, to put up with solitary confinement and torture…this is not activism light.

But he is the first to admit that in order to get attention for important issues you have to be dramatic. He’s better at that than any politician I can think of.

So while he’d spent his life organizing on the streets and Internet I was amazed by how really good at governing he became when he stepped into office. But ultimately his efforts to turn out the entrenched corruption in the Maldives and create a functional economy made him a victim of the very wealthy people who were no longer getting their share as he tried to change the system.

Jon Bowermaster/TakePart: What do you think of the criticism Nasheed was receiving in the Maldives before he was ousted that he was spending too much time traveling and working on international climate-change issues and not enough time at home focused on local problems like the economy, crime, drugs, education, etc.?

Jon Shenk: We showed The Island President at a theater in (the Maldivian capitol) Male for a week in November, and it got almost unanimously positive reviews, even from opposition websites. They said they had no idea what he was doing when he went abroad, but when they saw the film, when they saw him trying to get adaptation money and mitigation for the future, then they understood.

When he traveled abroad he was obviously working on international issues that couldn’t be more important to the Maldives. In the film you see him working like a dog. If I were a Maldivian, I would realize this is not some playboy going off to have fun; he was a hard-working negotiator working on behalf of the Maldives.

Jon Bowermaster/TakePart: Though he’s only been out of the presidency a few weeks, do you have any idea what’s next for him?

Jon Shenk: I asked him the same question over the phone 10 days ago. What he said kind of shocked me in its optimism. He basically said he thinks this may turn out to be a good thing, that if and when there are new elections in the Maldives, the people are going to know much more about who the remnants of the corrupt oligarchy are. Perhaps if Nasheed or some decent person is able to take power again, maybe that person will have more leeway to root out the criminals.

I look forward to following his career. The world of international climate politics is virtually impossible to change, because there is so much inertia. But he has carved out a place for himself in the environmental movement, which is looking for leadership.

Of course, that’s all on a back burner right now since he fears for his life and is still trying to maintain democracy in the Maldives. Because he’s smart, charismatic, and knows what’s right and wrong, I think he still has an amazing career ahead of him.

Jon Bowermaster/TakePart: Have you made any changes to the film given that he is no longer the president?

Jon Shenk: We never really saw this film as a news story but as a kind of David vs. Goliath tale about one of the “good people.” You see him standing up to leaders from China, Europe, the U.S. and India, saying over and over, “We’re not going to stand down.” So the film is really about leadership and the story of a man and how he’s chosen to live his life.

To change the film would pierce that. It is about what happened to him during that period, a precious document of that time of his life.

We did add a card at the end of the film that explains what’s gone on in the last couple months. I’ve been in audiences when that card comes up at the end, and there are audible sighs, because what you see in the film is this journey, this guy trying to get something done that is so bloody hard, nearly impossible. And then to read at the end that he’s been deposed by his enemies—it’s like twisting the knife in.

Photo: Ryan T. Pierse/Getty Images

But it’s not what you think.

We’re not talking cellophane-skinned, one-eyed creatures from another universe, but rather much more pedestrian invaders, including bluegrass, springtails, and weeds.

By happenstance, I participated in the research that discovered this growing threat to Antarctica. During a 2008 sailing expedition along the Peninsula, my team and I agreed to be sucked by hoses (vacuumed!) on a regular basis. The detritus collected from our clothing, pockets, cuffs, boots, hair and duffle bags was carefully put into sealed bags and sent off to be dissected by scientists at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University and its Center for Invasion Biology.

That year, 2008, also witnessed the height of visitors to Antarctica by both tourists and scientists—more than 40,000. The goal of the “Aliens in Antarctica” project, initiated by the Antarctic Treaty members, was to gauge just how many different invasive species all these visitors were carrying with them.

“We’re not talking cellophane-skinned, one-eyed creatures from another universe, but rather much more pedestrian invaders, including bluegrass, springtails, and weeds.”

The result of all that hosing and bagging from 1,000 volunteers has recently been reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Journal, which gives the alien invasion a hard number: Based on calculations, that season more than 71,000 seeds were carried ashore (31,732 on tourists, 38,897 on scientists), suggesting that on average every person who visits the remote continent unknowingly carries 9.5 seeds with them.

Formally, the aliens are known as plant propagules—detachable structures, such as seeds. At least four alien grasses have been identified and taken root, a reality one Australian scientist labeled a “substantial threat.”

Visiting humans changing an environment by transporting non-native plants is an old story. In Chile, algae arriving on the boots of fly fishermen have recently killed off entire lakes. The Hudson River, where I live, is choked with water chestnuts, which first showed up clinging to tanker ships arriving from afar. Today in the Galapagos, invasive species of plants outnumber native ones.

Until recently, Antarctica had staved off invasives thanks to its isolation and cold. But as more and more people come to visit, and as temperatures warm around its edges, particularly along the Peninsula where most of the tourists visit, all these hitchhiking invasives have a far better chance of surviving.

The tourists are not the worst culprits; the study puts most of the blame on visiting scientists who pack up their cold-weather gear at season’s end, take it home, use it in a variety of natural settings and then return with it to Antarctica accompanied by undetected stowaways.

Stemming the problem is a challenge. Asking Antarctic visitors to be more dutiful is a start. Visitors should wash boots and vacuum clothes and bags before arriving. In the words of Steven Chown, the invasive biology expert who co-authored the “Aliens in Antarctica” report, “Good biosecurity begins with personal responsibility.”
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Several incidents at Chevron rigs in the Frade oil field (roughly 230 miles northeast of Rio de Janerio) since late last year—and as recently as this week—have oozed more than 3,000 barrels of crude into the Atlantic Ocean. Brazilian prosecutors have filed an $11.2 billion civil suit against both Chevron and, voila, its drilling partner Transocean Ltd., for the accidents. Add that to previously assessed fines topping $100 million.

“A sizable oil leak was first detected last November; today (March 20) the company admitted to a “new small seep.” An anonymous source tells Brazilian officials many more spills are imminent.”

Frade is the largest foreign-run oil field in Brazil, producing more than 80,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Though Chevron, the biggest foreign oil company working in Brazil, has temporarily shut down its production operations in the country, there’s talk among local politicians about banning Chevron from Brazil’s oil riches if it doesn’t shape up. Along those lines, 17 employees of Chevron and Transocean had their passports confiscated this week and are banned from leaving Brazil until a full accounting of the recent accidents is made.

According to a report in The New York Times, Brazil’s state-controlled oil giant Petrobas reported 66 oil leaks in the country in 2011, which spilled more than 60,000 gallons. Brazil’s boom, and leaks, are a reminder of just how closely tied drilling and spilling are:

1) While the future of the Keystone XL pipeline is still being hotly debated, a new report by Cornell University claims that spills from tar sands—a heavier and more corrosive oil product that puts greater stress on pipelines—are three times more likely to occur than conventionally accessed oil. The existing Keystone 1 pipeline, operating since 2010, has had 35 spills in its 2,100-mile run.

2) We reported here in 2010 about a one-million-gallon oil spill from tar sands into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River that eventually drifted 40 miles upstream. More than 130 houses have since been abandoned along the river; hunting, fishing and other recreational activities in the area have been forbidden; and the cleanup has cost twice what pipeline operator Enbridge, Inc. originally estimated, so far topping $725 million.
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3) With the two-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion on the horizon (April 20), BP was happy to get that $7.8 billion worth of payoffs behind it. But as deepwater drilling picks up off the Gulf Coast, some drilling within Mexican and Cuban waters and out of U.S. cleanup jurisdiction, the company is far from off the hook. The Wall Street Journal reports that civil penalties of $1,100 to $4,300 per barrel (the total spilled was 4.9 million barrels) and additional penalties under the Clean Water Act could cost the company another $21 billion. BP needs to keep on drilling in order to pay off its fines, including ramping up its five deepwater rigs still operating in the Gulf and the three more coming online before year’s end.

4) In the boldest move yet in the exploitation-versus-environmental protection tug-of-war, Shell Oil has preemptively sued 13 environmental groups (Audubon Society, Oceana, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and more) before even drilling its first well. Though the company has spent $4 billion since 2007 on its Chukchi Sea project without sucking a drop of oil from the floor of the Arctic Ocean, it is requesting a federal court to declare in advance that its cleanup response plans are sufficient. The cynical lawsuit suggests the company is preparing not for if an accident may occur, but when.

I spent January there, filming a big, new 3D movie about “change” in Antarctica, sailing down on the 74-foot Pelagic Australis. But all of that seeming uneventfulness has gone out the window with an apparent suicide-by-sailboat misadventure that is being closely monitored by Navies around the Southern Ocean.

Norwegian Jarle Andhoey, 34, self-proclaimed Viking and scofflaw of international treaties and sailing safety, and his 52-foot yacht, Nilaya, are thought to have gone missing while sailing from Antarctica toward Cape Horn. Last public contact with the Nilaya—which is not carrying an EPIRB, so it cannot be tracked by satellite even when in trouble—was a phone call from one of the crew members to his wife about five days ago. He reportedly told her the sail was broken, the boat was adrift, and that they were out of diesel and food. He had no idea of the boat’s position. Last Wednesday, March 14, Andhoey’s Oslo-based lawyer confirmed the boat was in trouble — broken mast? — and was headed back to Antarctica, hoping to land at one of the Argentina bases along the Peninsula.

If Andhoey’s name rings a bell, it’s because he was in the news exactly one year ago when his yacht the Berserk sank with three crew members aboard off the coast of Antarctica…while he and an 18-year-old boy were attempting an illegal run toward the South Pole aboard ATVs. On top of the loss of life, that misadventure got him arrested back in Norway and fined $5,000 by the Norwegian Polar Institute for traveling without permits or insurance.

This past January Andhoey headed back to the Ross Sea aboard a new yacht, claiming he was searching for signs of his lost boat. He insisted last year’s efforts by New Zealand, the U.S., and even the Sea Shepherd—which sent its helicopter out to scour the wild seas and ultimately spied its empty life raft—had failed to mount “a proper search.”

In and out of trouble for a decade, Andhoey has been a branded a madman in his home country by many people. He has even most likely renamed his new boat Berserk IV. On his website he compares himself to Roald Amundsen and has been known to wear a helmet with Viking horns.

“”It’s pathetic, really, and one has to have genuine sympathy for the families of the three lost souls that his quest for fame condemned to death.”"

Others have been far more critical than simply calling Andhoey a nutjob. New Zealand multimillionaire economist and Antarctic sailor Gareth Morgan has told the press he hopes whatever the boat is called, it sinks, describing Andhoey as a “bottom feeder, a taker of the worst kind.” “He appears to not give a toss about the amount of hurt he imparts on those who get in the way of his quest for his ‘Wild Vikings’ brand to attract sponsors and book sales,” Morgan told the New Zealand Herald. “It’s pathetic, really, and one has to have genuine sympathy for the families of the three lost souls that his quest for fame condemned to death.” Charlene Banks, sister of one of Andhoey’s crewmen who went down with the Berserk a year ago, calls him “diabolical.” “It’s all about publicity,” she told Radio New Zealand. “He’s definitely not well-prepared at all; he leaves everything to the last minute. He hasn’t got any of authorities’ approval. He believes he’s above the law.”

New Zealand authorities had been on the lookout for the Nilaya since January, when Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs alerted them that Andhoey was apparently going to attempt a return to Antarctica, again without permits or insurance. The boat was spotted by the custom’s plane in international waters off New Zealand. It apparently managed to stop in New Zealand long enough to pick up crew, though it’s not known exactly how many people are sailing aboard the Nilaya. It’s thought that now-19-year-old Samuel Massie, who was with Andhoey when they tried to reach the South Pole by ATV last year, is onboard, as is a Kiwi Maori political activist Busby Noble, who has variably reported that he was below decks repairing the anchor when the boat sailed away with him on it…or that he joined the misadventure to help give a proper blessing to the men who’d been lost at sea, one of whom was a friend.

As more private yachts sail to Antarctica each year, the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) has been rigorous about trying to keep operators informed on the dos and don’ts of sailing to the only place on the planet governed by international treaty. The first warning given in its manual for yachties is: All Antarctica-bound yacht expeditions must be authorized by the operator’s own country or the vessel’s flag state. In Antarctica, the Nilaya apparently sailed within two miles of the big U.S. base at McMurdo and was spotted by a base employee; New Zealand’s Scott Base was instructed not to receive the boat or crew if it showed up. They touched the ice at some point because Noble reported via sat phone to have planted the Maori flag.

When it had no luck finding any sign of the Berserk, the Nilaya apparently headed from the Ross Sea toward Cape Horn, which this time of year means navigating a 200-mile-wide band of ice. The skipper’s thinking was that if he was able to reach Argentinaian-soil—rather than going back to New Zealand, where authorities at the very least want to present him with a $9,000 bill for searching for him—he wouldn’t face arrest or prosecution. Today he bigger question remains, where is Andhoey? And what was he thinking?

It was just a 115-mile drive west through softly rolling hills, and while the physical landscape barely changed, man’s footprint did, as rural poverty evidenced itself with each mile of tumbling-down wooden-frame houses and strips of abandoned commercial real estate.

Closing in on the college towns of Ithaca and Binghamton, I started to see a proliferation of “No-Fracking-Way” yard signs and billboards. Nurtured and driven by college students, educated homeowners, and weathered lefties, the struggle over who can drill for natural gas and where is clearly a far bigger issue here than it is in my backyard in the Hudson Valley.

The reason is simple: My backyard, and several nearby counties that run south to New York City, is largely protected from drilling due to its proximity to the watershed that delivers 1.1 billion gallons of clean drinking water to the city each day.

For all his positives, three-term billionaire Mayor Bloomberg—like many politicians, including those dependent on campaign donations from energy companies—has given gas drillers a pass, saying just last week that as long as it’s done outside the watershed “fracking is something on balance that is better for this country than the alternative,” meaning coal.

There is of course a pro-fracking argument. It contends that drilling for natural gas could create up to 600,000 new jobs. In his most recent State of the Union address, President Obama said, “We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy.”

On a more local level, there are a lot of very poor people living in rural New York who wouldn’t think twice of accepting $1,000 an acre for drilling rights. “They could put the damn thing right in my living room—I wouldn’t care,” said a resident of nearby Pennsylvania.

On Saturday night a couple of thousand motivated people turned out for a rally in Binghamton clearly in fighting mode. Given its proximity to the Pennsylvania border, where drilling for natural gas has already gone awry, contaminating drinking water and rivers, people here are worried about their health, real estate values, and what is still, in many respects, a clean environment.

Two of the more popular people in the room were residents of Dimock, Pennsylvania. One held up a gallon jug filled with what looked like pond scum but was the water he’d poured from his tap. He was offering tastings, as he had to energy department CEOs and department of environment commissioners. Every potential drinker responded with the same, “No, thanks.”

At his side was a ponytailed man in his late 50s whose job with an energy company had been delivering tankers of clean water to communities where drinking water had been contaminated by fracking. When he discovered the company was sending clean water in the same tankers it used to take away bad water—and not cleaning them in between hauls—he quit.

The Pennsylvania contingent’s tales of showers that cause rashes and nausea, drinking water that pours brown from the tap, tanker traffic destroying small county roads, and drill rigs eating up square miles of countryside drew big crowds of eavesdroppers.

“Tales of showers that cause rashes and nausea, drinking water that pours brown from the tap, tanker traffic destroying small county roads, and drill rigs eating up square miles of countryside drew big crowds of eavesdroppers.”

With the statewide moratorium on fracking in New York up for renewal or lifting by the end of 2012, fracking has turned into a community-by-community fight. More than 100 towns in New York state are fighting to adopt local bans, which they hope will keep the fight alive and the gas companies out even if the state lifts the moratorium.

It’s an uphill fight. Even some ardent environmentalists see drilling for natural gas as an inevitability across the U.S., given rising costs of foreign oil, the proven dirtiness of coal, and the riskiness of nuclear. “If done safely, with proper monitoring…” is their mantra. Energy companies claim techniques for naturalgas drilling have improved and that previous problems with fracking were due to “bad” drilling rather than the chemicals used in the process.

Having heard some of the horror stories of natural gas drills gone awry from across the country—it is currently being done in 33 states—my experience at the anti-frack rally in Binghamton was more concerning than positive. I’ve spent a lot of time in recent years in Louisiana, where for decades, drilling for oil has taken place largely unmonitored on both land and sea. The place is an environmental mess, and people’s health has been badly damaged (by runoff from wells, poisoned aquifers, chemicals in the air). The smartest people I know in Louisiana, when I tell them I live in upstate New York, are the first to say don’t follow our lead; just say no to fracking.

Case in point: One of the biggest “failures” in natural-gas drilling is apparently the cementing of pipes underground, which if done badly, allows the chemicals used in fracking to escape and mix with groundwater and aquifers. When was the last time we heard of a bad cement job leading to a drilling failure? Think Deepwater Horizon….

One piece of good news: on Monday the New York’s general assembly announced it had asked that a “health impact study” be part of the state’s review of gas drilling, proposed by a representative from Ithaca.The future in New York is largely in the hands of a “fracking” panel put together by Governor Cuomo’s Department of Environmental Conservation. Its recommendations are expected sometime this year. Meanwhile, environmental groups, New York City commissioners, and the public are “negotiating” outloud as if it’s a matter of when rather than if. For example, NYC’s environmental commission has proposed that if drilling is allowed, none takes place within seven miles of the major aqueducts that deliver water to the city. Debates are ongoing over which towns may benefit from natural-gas drilling bans due to their proximity to NYC’s water delivery lines.

On a more realistic note, later on Monday, I read a positive review in The New York Times of a new, full-size pickup truck that will run on natural gas “once that resource is fully exploited.”

The list has included the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, the Maldives and Seychelles. And this week the leader of equator-straddling Kiribati officially let it be known that he is also on the hunt for a new place to settle as lapping waves and eroding beaches become increasingly part of his island nation’s daily worry.

Even if the best-case scenario were to come true and all greenhouse gas emissions were braked tomorrow, ocean levels around the world would still rise three to six feet by 2100. This will make life untenable on islands from Polynesia to Manhattan and particularly Kiribati, which climbs no higher than six feet.

The government in Kiribati has already experimented with building sea walls and has even considered construction of floating “homes,” like something straight out of Waterworld. Some of Kiribati’s residents have already moved inland or to one of its other 32 islands, since fresh water resources are contaminated by salt water and growing fields are flooded.

Making plans for his 103,000 citizens to higher grounds was not a backup plan, Kiribati President Anote Tong said, but “our last resort.” Tong has his eyes on purchasing a piece of Fiji, specifically nine-square miles on its second largest island, Vanua Levu. He announced to his cabinet this week that he intends to buy the 6,000 acres of fertile land, currently listed by a church group, for $9.6 million.

“Making plans for his 103,000 citizens to higher grounds was not a backup plan, [the president] said, but ‘our last resort.’ ”

Not only is the President putting together a war chest for purchasing property, starting with foreign reserves built up during the island’s 1970s phosphate-mining boom days, but he will also eventually call on the international community to kick in. In addition, he has a rudimentary migration plan, which involves initially sending 500 of Kiribati’s most skilled workers to Fiji to “carve out a niche” so that when mass migration begins later in the century, Kiribatians will have a foothold and not be regarded as environmental refugees.

To avoid being considered second-class citizens, President Tong has also launched an “Education for Migration” program, aimed at increasing the employability of his people. In addition, President Tong is looking at Australia and New Zealand as potential new homelands for some of his people.

The president made it clear that any move from his homeland would not be made for him and his generation, but for the youth of Kiribati. “Moving won’t be a matter of choice for them,” he told the Associated Press, “it’s basically going to be a matter of survival.”

Fiji-based realtors have actually been engaged in the negotiation between the Kiribati government and private landholders. Making the land arable so that new settlers can grow vegetables and fruit is a top priority; so is taking sand and dirt from Fiji by barge back to Kiribati to help stem rising sea levels.

Fiji sits about 1,400 miles south of Kiribati; adding additional people to its 850,000 would obviously cause some stress. Historically its high islands (Fiji is made up 106 islands, with peaks rising as high as 4,000 feet) have been regarded as safe havens by low-lying neighbors that are running out of resources.

For the moment, the Fijian government is said to be “studying” Kiribati’s plans and will have a formal statement next week.

But the reality is that the globe will witness a future where nations build and die with the rising tides as more and more citizens of low-lying countries bcome environmental refugees.

But as last week’s World Oceans Summit in Singapore, sponsored by The Economist magazine, wound down, it was on a bit of a positive note, perhaps because the summit made sure to invite not just environmentalists, but bankers and economists too.

Like many of the world’s big problems, sound economic policy must go hand-in-hand with creative environmental solutions. Leave the money guys out of problem-solving and chances are you’ll come away both short of cash and follow-through.

In his keynote speech at the gathering’s opening, World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick set the tone by suggesting that solving the ills that ail the world’s oceans involves bringing the private sector and international public institutions (in this case venerated environmental groups including Conservation International, the IUCN, the World Wild Life Fund and more) together and forcing them (my emphasis) to work side by side.

The groups that signed on to support the initiative include the World Bank, California-based Paine & Partners (a private equity firm), and the National Geographic Society; nonprofit environmental groups including CI and the Environmental Defense Fund; industry groups such as the National Fisheries Institute; and international organizations like FAO, UNESCO and the UNDP. The Global Partnership for Oceans was the name given the cooperative agreement, and on its face it sounds like the best, most-inclusive plan for helping to protect the oceans that I’ve heard in a decade. “The bottom line,” Conservation International’s CEO Peter Seligmann told the crowd, “is our lives depend on oceans, but we need to better understand them.” He went on to say that “enlightened self-interest” should propel all nations and communities to take care of the ocean.

(Thanks to a scheduling conflict—whether accidental or deliberate, we’ll never know—the meeting overlapped with the 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting, held in Salt Lake City and attracting 4,000 ocean experts. Maybe leaving the eggheads out was strategic? Only time will tell if their input might have helped.)

“Leave the money guys out of problem-solving and chances are you’ll come away both short of cash and follow-through.”

The goal of the newly announced alliance—which intends to raise $1.5 billion to support its efforts—is to speak with one voice regarding overfishing, pollution and habitat loss, through partnerships ranging from projects like carbon-dioxide-absorbing seaweed farms to establishing more marine-protected areas and helping small fishermen better compete against big commercial ventures.

The group cited a variety of socioeconomic and environmental reasons for its intense focus on the ocean:

90 percent of people who make their living off the ocean live in developing countries;
350 million jobs globally are linked to the ocean;
1 billion people in developing countries depend on fish for their primary source of protein;
5 times more carbon is stored by coastal habitats than tropical forests, helping to absorb heat and carbon dioxide, generate oxygen and help regulate the world’s weather patterns;
85 nations and $102 billion are involved in the international fish trade;
$9 billion earned in ecotourism from reef diving;
$10 billion in tuna alone is traded each year;
85 percent of the world’s ocean fisheries are categorized as Fully Exploited, Over-Exploited or Depleted;
$2.2 trillion has been lost in the past 30 years due to mismanagement of the fisheries;
and less than 2 percent of ocean is protected, while more than 12 percent of land is under protection.

The Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, coming in June, will be the first opportunity for the new partnership to prove it can become a viable player in global efforts to manage the ocean, something no one has succeeded in…yet.

Photo by Graham Charles

It is one of the most prolific wildlife scenes I’ve ever witnessed here. The skies are dark, hinting snow, but the incredible beauty has kept us out on deck all morning. Literally thousands of Gentoos emerge in one big pack after another, swimming and porpoising. In single file they surface and jump onto a tiny piece of ice, which quickly disintegrates under their accumulated weight. Other penguins savvier, popping up onto bigger icebergs, which they scamper up and over, again in single file, before diving one at a time off the opposite side.

As well as gathering krill and small fish for their by-now two-month-old chicks, these penguins, I’m convinced, are also out horsing around, having some fun. It’s summertime, after all. In another month or two this scene will be dramatically different, frozen and iced-in, and all of Antarctica’s wildlife will be pushed to the ice edge.

It’s an interesting year to talk about ice along the Peninsula. Every year the sea around Antarctica freezes solid, essentially doubling the size of the continent. And every year with spring and summer, most of that frozen sea either melts or breaks into smaller pieces and is blown away, offshore.

This year is different. Though summer is two-thirds over, still-thick sea ice borders the coastline and encases many of its just-offshore islands. It’s more ice than any of us who’ve been visiting the Peninsula for the past couple of decades has seen in 15 years or so.

After watching the penguins hunt for a couple hours we sail south, to Petermann Island, a traditional summer stop and home to nesting Adelie, Gentoo, and blue-eyed Cormorants. For several years the Washington, D.C.-based environmental group Oceanites had put up tents here, allowing its volunteers to come and live for an entire season, documenting wildlife. On an average day during the season, one or two tourist ships usually land passengers on Petermann for a walk around.

But no one has visited the island this year. We attempt to chug through the two miles of thick, slushy ice separating the island from a clear channel. Several times our boat’s engine overheats due to the thick slush being sucked into the intake, requiring us to turn off the engine and plunge it out to prevent it from stopping for good.

Meanwhile, through binoculars, we can make out the fuel storage tank at the Ukrainian science base of Vernadsky in the Argentine Islands. We’ve stopped there many times in the past, to anchor in the calm creek that sits behind it and to share a meal and home-brewed vodka with the 14 scientists based there for 12 straight months. This year, thanks to all the ice staying put and not drifting away, no one has been able to reach the base. The Ukrainians have been iced-in for nearly one year. We raise the base commander on the VHF, and he assures us all is good—they recently celebrated the Ukrainian New Year with a big dinner—but he admits they are anxiously hoping their 14 replacements will be able to reach the base in another month.

Sailing back to the north, heading toward a safe anchorage at Pt. Charcot—near where we’d watched the penguins and leopard seals frolic earlier in the day—the wind comes up, the seas darken, and the ice that surrounds us begins to move. It pushes toward land, filling in any open gap in the sea.

As Skip Novak pilots the boat in, around and through the ice, I sense worry. If we are to anchor at Pt. Chacot and the wind keeps blowing out of the west, as it is predicted, it is very likely we’ll be stuck, unable to move or get off the boat, for many days.

Standing outside in the blow we talk—actually shout over the wind—about our options. It is actually a very short conversation. “Let’s get north, away from this ice,” says Skip. I agree.

Now stories of too much ice along the Antarctic Peninsula may run contrary to those you’ve heard—many from me!—about how much the temperatures in this part of the continent are warming and ice melting.

That hasn’t changed: Both air and water temperatures along the Peninsula have gone up on average 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 40 years, the biggest such change on the planet. The issue this season is not lack of warmth, but lack of wind.

During our adventure this year I’ve had two fascinating conversations with longtime Peninsula veterans about the changes they’ve seen. Each agreed the warming is creating big differences, though each focused on different impacts.

Bill Fraser, one of Antarctica’s premiere penguin scientists, has been visiting the American Palmer Station since the mid-1970s and is convinced the warming temps are changing wildlife patterns. He blames the changes specifically on the lack of sea ice due to warming air and sea temps.

Leif Skog is captain of the National Geographic Explorer, operated by Lindblad Expeditions, which has been bringing tourists to Antarctica since the mid-1960s. Skog has been coming here for nearly 40 years. We spoke on the bridge of his ship at Pt. Lockroy, the former British refuge hut known as “Camp A.”

For him, the biggest change has been the weather, specifically the wind. Or lack of it. “We used to get katabatic winds roaring down off the glaciers every three days or so. Gusts of over 100 miles per hour. We prepared for them, worried about them constantly. Now…we never see winds like that.” Changing weather patterns influenced by warming temperatures—and the lack of sea ice—makes perfect sense for what we’ve witnessed this season.

As we sail the Pelagic Australis to safety, slowly pushing through the still-thick, slushy ice toward the backside of the beautiful Lemaire Channel, standing outside in blowing snow and cold, Skip and I talk about just what an incredible part of the world Antarctica is. We drift past a sizable iceberg we had lingered near earlier in the morning, under far different conditions.

Reminding us that every day—every hour—is different in Antarctica. Make that every 15 minutes.

Fingers are being pointed at allies of the previous president, Maumoon Gayoom, for orchestrating Nasheed’s resignation. It was the Gayoom administration, which spanned 30 years, that had locked up and tortured a younger Nasheed before he became the first democratically elected president in the country’s history.

While celebrated internationally for his environmental politics, Nasheed’s presidency has been at risk at home. Critics have claimed the “Island President” (the name of the documentary that has recently won awards and attention at festivals from Toronto to Sundance) was paying too much attention to global issues and not enough to his backyard; others complained his leadership was not “Islamic enough” for the all-Muslim nation.

In recent months the country has experienced its own brand of “Arab Spring,” but rather than oust a dictator, this movement was against the country’s first democratically elected president.

Three weeks ago President Nasheed ordered the arrest and jailing of a high court judge—an ally of the former president—on charges of corruption. Street protests against the president, said to have been coordinated by allies of the former president—including a half-brother and members of his security force—were successful enough for the military to be sent into the streets.

Nasheed’s resignation speech indicated he was stepping down to avoid further and more serious clashes between the military, the police and protestors. It is being reported that he claims to have stepped down after being threatened by policemen with guns and that he is now being held under a kind of house arrest. There have also been reports that the now former president may have been injured during continued street protests.

Coincidentally, when I flew into the Maldives four months ago, I landed at the southern island of Laamu, where a sizable crowd was gathered on the sidewalk outside the airport. The street was clogged with women in headscarves and men in pickup trucks. They seemed to be surrounding a man walking. I asked what all the hubbub was about and was told it was former president Gayoom, who was clearly still liked by many.

One of the ironies of Nasheed’s three-year-long democracy is that a number of political parties emerged during that time, including one devoted to his predecessor. When I met Nasheed later that week, he was clearly worried about his upcoming re-election, especially due to the loyalty of Gayoom’s Progressive Party and a handful of other, smaller pro-Islamic political parties. I don’t think then that he envisioned his presidency would last just another 100 days and that he would be forced to quit.

That same day I had dinner with then-Vice President Dr. Waheed Hassan, a seemingly kind man who had previously worked for UNICEF, and his wife, a teacher who schooled students in her home. When asked at dinner (by Richard Branson) if he wanted to be president, he politely deferred. I’m sure he did not imagine that night that 100 days later he would be sworn into office.

Reports show military men going in and out of Nasheed’s private residence, carrying out boxes, including so-called “illicits” like liquor bottles. Be sure and read the accounts in The Guardian by Nasheed’s environmental adviser, Mark Lynas, who reports: “Gayoom controls the judiciary, now the executive, the media, and in couple of weeks probably the parliament. One thing he cannot control is popular support for President Nasheed, so he needs to find a way to jail or discredit him ahead of the 2013 election,” the spokesperson said.

“Using violence and then taking over the TV station, as well as recruiting converts among the police, the anti-democratic opposition faced Nasheed with a choice—to either use force or resign,” writes Lynas. “Ever the human rights activist, he chose the latter option and stepped down to avoid bloodshed. Even as I write, his whereabouts are still unknown, and though he is supposedly in the ‘protection’ of the military I fear desperately for his personal safety and that of his family. I have heard that he is currently being held against his will under military house arrest, in which case he must be immediately released. All I can do is take comfort from the fact that the struggle can only continue for a man famous in the west for his outspokenness on climate change, but whose real lifelong cause has been his commitment to bringing democracy to his Indian Ocean island homeland.”

Once anchored and tied to the rocks at four corners—a necessity in Antarctica given the unpredictable winds and constantly moving ice, which are the twin constant threats of boats both big and small down here—we settle in for a good night’s sleep before going ashore the next day to interview and film scientists based here for the austral summer.

But when we awake the scene around our boat has changed: Big winds have pushed a field of brash ice—small chunks of floating ice that have a tendency to congeal into bigger masses when temps are cold—into the narrow channel, threatening to trap the sailboat and make getting back and forth to shore a nightmare.

Tying our nine-foot rubber Zodiac up next to the station’s row of a half-dozen bigger, sturdier versions, it feels a bit like we’ve ridden up to an Old West town and saddled our Shetland pony next to a string of quarter horses.

Though it is gray and misting heavily when we climb ashore, the station’s manager, Bob Farrell, wearing sweatshirt and jeans, meets us outside. His charges this summer total just 41, a third of them scientists, the rest support staff.

Whether krill expert or IT guy, whether studying Antarctica’s longest-living insect (a midge) or looking after the station’s wastewater system, every one of the 42 people based here for three to six months treats the place with equal parts reverence and occasional disdain. While each scientist loves Antarctica in his/her own way, many returning year after year, the isolation—and grayness—of the place can sometimes make the assignment feel more jail sentence than golden opportunity. The two days we are at Palmer it rains and snows and rains and snows, with the sun coming out for just a tempting 30-minute peek, and then it starts to sleet.

Luckily for us, the place is busy with interesting science and super-committed-scientists. While the NSF-supported scientists are often in the field counting penguins or sampling underwater algae, a handful are here working the first-floor labs doing what scientists do: count, recount, analyze, compare, dissect, hypothesize, write and edit. Among the hi-tech support here is a full-on Wi-Fi connection, which allows phones with U.S. prefixes to ring and Skype or Immarsat conferences on experiments to take place between scientists and colleagues back home in New Jersey.

For example, we find Rutgers’s University grad student Travis Miles in a lab preparing a four-foot long yellow “glider,” which he and assistants will slide into the ocean a couple miles from the station to collect data from deep channels nearby. The program has already sent one of its gliders 7,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

In a similar but different underwater endeavor, across the hall we meet Kim Bernard—native of South Africa and currently studying at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science—who shows off colorful screen grabs from her own undersea work, which is focused on krill fluctuations. The mainstay of Antarctica’s food web, krill have recently seen its population decline. Is it the warming waters? Overfishing? Extra-hungry predators? While the Rutgers’s team goes deep for answers, Kim studies the potential influence of tides on krill.

And both studies benefit Palmer’s most long-term study, of Adelie penguins, led by Bill Fraser, who has been coming to Palmer since the mid-1970s. HQ for Fraser and his birding team—he currently has two teams of two scientists out on remote islands, counting—is a sturdy half-dome tent on the station’s front deck.

Sharing a glass of early evening whisky, Fraser details some of the changes he’s seen since first arriving at Palmer in 1975-76, staying the first season for three months, the next for 13 months. During those decades he’s watched Adelie penguin populations decrease significantly, due to warming temperatures; Gentoo penguin numbers increase, as they move into the warming neighborhoods abandoned by the Adelies; and krill numbers fluctuate wildly.

But the main thing he’s witnessed is less and less ice. Photographs assembled by various Palmer Station managers and visiting photographers show that at this tip of Anvers Island the retreat has been significant; they show a glacier behind the station that has retreated by 1,500 feet.

“That is the future of the Antarctic Peninsula,” says Fraser. “The ice is definitely disappearing. And fast.”