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S TA R K & W I L D
ice sheets
ANTARCTICA
Snow falls slowly across Antarctica: barely
enough in a year to cover your shoes. But
it collects gradually, flake on flake, year
on year, until it compacts to form the ice
that covers 98 percent of the continent.
Over millennia, gravity pulls some of this
immense ice sheet toward the sea, where
it forms floating ice shelves or calves into
icebergs. Wildlife has a chance—just—on
this icy fringe, and penguins, seals, whales,
and seabirds contrive to live in the coldest,
driest, and windiest place on Earth.
DON’T MISS
Small-boat cruises—generally those with fewer than
100 people—can edge much closer than large cruise
vessels to Antarctica’s penguins, seals, and other
wildlife and to the awe-inspiring, icebound land-
scapes of the “White Continent.”
A leopard seal on the Antarctic pack ice. The leopard
seal is the only seal to prey on other seals.