In 2014, its hydroponics facility was the site of an infamous alien invasion. "And so it's really worthwhile putting all our efforts to try to keep nature operating without interfering." "It's a super special place to understand how the planet works," says Bergstrom. If an alien were to slip in, it could be disastrous for the delicate Antarctic ecosystems hidden from the world for millennia. Signatories to the Antarctic Treaty and the Madrid Protocol, which include protections for the Antarctic environment, must endeavor to limit their effects on the pristine wilderness, and tourist bodies like IAATO and national Antarctic programs go to great lengths to prevent biological invasions. That's a 35% increase over the previous season. In the 2019-20 season, almost 75,000 people visited the continent, according to IAATO, the chief tourist body in the Antarctic. Before the pandemic slowed cruises to a halt, Antarctic tourism was on the rise. "Back-of-the-napkin math, less than a million people in the entire history of human existence have visited Antarctica," says Dana Bergstrom, an ecologist at the Australian Antarctic Division.īut that too is changing. It's become easier to reach the continent and its surroundings by sea or air, but it remains an exclusive club. A handful of nations with a permanent presence across the continent annually resupply research stations that provide permanent outposts for studying the ice and the Antarctic ecosystem. As Antarctic explorers aimed to discover and map the continent in the 1800s, humans began providing fleeting opportunities for alien trespass. Historically, it's been difficult for lost flies to reach the most southern landmass on Earth. In February 2020, the temperature at Argentina's Esperanza Base research station reached 18.3 degrees Fahrenheit – an all-time high – providing the kind of conditions a wayward housefly might survive in. In particular regions, like the western peninsula, the continent is warming at a rate 10 times faster than the rest of the world. That may just be an unprecedented anomaly, but it's expected the continent's average temperatures could rise a few degrees by 2050. In March, a French-Italian base in East Antarctica recorded temperatures 70 degrees higher than average for that time of year. Pete Harmsen/AADīut Antarctica's temperature is changing, and dramatically. The RSV Nuyina during its maiden voyage to Antarctica in January. Couple that with freezing temperatures, and the Antarctic provides little hope for a wayward housefly trapped on a ship. The Southern Ocean provides a formidable barrier to entering Antarctica, a great wall of water and powerful currents that has separated the continent from the rest of the world for about 30 million years. If their prison break were to succeed, they'd find themselves facing seemingly endless waters, with nowhere to go. Surviving flies buzz at the ship's windows, trying to escape the upper decks.
I know this because I've been watching them as part of the crew onboard the Nuyina as it crosses the Southern Ocean. At temperatures below 14 degrees Fahrenheit, flies move lackadaisically and seem to barely get airborne. You likely know it as the housefly.Įven if it hadn't been felled by an errant hand or boot, it likely wouldn't have survived the journey to Antarctica. Scientists call the creature Musca domestica. Unlike the throng of Antarctic expeditioners aboard the RSV Nuyina, Australia's newest icebreaking ship, it hasn't cleared customs.ĭays after the Nuyina departed its harbor in Hobart, Tasmania, the alien buzzed its way across the Derwent River, slipped through an open door and zipped into the bowels of the ship until this restless, twitching death.
If you get close enough, you can see one of its six legs twitching and one of its translucent wings crushed to pieces. At the bottom of the stairwell leading to deck five, an alien lies upturned on green nonslip flooring.
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