As our bus bounced down the winding dirt road, through the Mars-like landscape of King George Island in the South Shetland Islands, a cargo container shelter came into view. On the front porch a crowd was gathering, waving eagerly. At first, I thought they might be residents of the Chilean Frei base, which maintains the rudimentary gravel runway on which we just landed. Scientists, perhaps, or support staff that keep the base functional. But then I saw her—the venerable marine biologist Dr. Sylvia Earle, shepherding passengers from Aurora Expedition’s Sylvia Earle, the new polar expedition ship that had just completed its first sailing. We were in the midst of switching places: those on the bus about to embark upon our Antarctic adventure, and those on the porch returning home after theirs. Earle had been onboard to christen her namesake vessel.
Across Antarctica, you’ll find no shortage of places, landmarks, and even animals named after women: Queen Elizabeth Land, Una’s Peaks, and the Adélie penguin, among them. But it’s not a reflection of the many scientific accomplishments by women in the region. It’s because the continent has long been dominated by men—men who named things after their sweethearts at home, female benefactors, or, in the case of Una’s Peaks, after a secretary’s body. (The informal name for the basalt towers at the entrance to the Lemaire Channel, a narrow passage between 3,000-foot mountains that’s frequently traversed by cruises, is extremely uncouth.) Fortunately, times are changing, and places and ships in Antarctica are now being named to celebrate women for their accolades.
In the case of Earle, 87, that list of accolades is monumental. In 1970, she led a two-week stay in the underwater laboratory, part of the Tektite II project co-sponsored by NASA, which studied the psychological effects of living in confined spaces—the space agency was interested in the implications for long-duration space missions. Though Earle had applied for earlier missions in the Tektite program, women were excluded from participating; Earle’s mission, Mission 6, was an all-female team of aquanauts. In 1979, she set the record for the deepest untethered sea walk by a woman: wearing a specialized diving suit, Earle strolled the ocean floor at a depth of 1,250 feet. And in 1990, Earle became the first female Chief Scientist of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). With her robust body of underwater work, it should come as little surprise that Earle has earned the colloquial title ‘Her Deepness.’
But the ship Sylvia Earle isn’t solely dedicated to Earle. In fact, each of her decks is named after a female leader in ocean sciences: marine educator Sharon Kwok, plastic-free pioneer Joanna Ruxton, coral conservationist Dr. Carden Wallace AM, Arctic wildlife guardian Bernadette Demientieff, marine biologist Dr. Asha de Vos, and conservationist Hanli Prinsloo. And then there are the women onboard the ship itself. All expedition cruises are home to a staff comprising experts in a variety of fields relevant to the sailing’s itinerary, from scientists to mountaineers to historians, and on our sailing, the 23-strong team includes seven women, most of whom were Antarctic veterans with specialties ranging from scuba diving to marine zoology. As someone obsessed with ice, volcanoes, and outer space, I was particularly drawn to the multi-hyphenate Dr. Ulyana Horodyskyj Peña, a glaciologist, geologist, mountaineer, professor, and astronomy enthusiast. (Enthusiast might be an understatement; she was a semi-finalist for the NASA astronaut class of 2017.) Appropriately, I formally met her atop a glacier.
