THE SOUTHERN OCEAN
The truth is the Southern Ocean had been shrinking for some time, retreating south and being eroded in increments. As gales roared over its waters and legions of albatrosses wheeled across its skies, bureaucrats and policymakers were busy plotting its demise.
It all started back in 1914 when the newly-formed International Hydrographic Bureau attempted to agree on borders and names for the world’s oceans and seas. Although this sounds like the basis for a Monty Python skit, it was a serious attempt at defining ownership of the unownable. Ten years later, in the great human spirit of letting nothing be wild and free, the Bureau produced a publication entitled Limits of Oceans and Seas.
Captain James Cook was one of the first to prove that the southern region of the globe was composed of a single great ocean. This came as a disappointment: he had been hoping to find the fabled continent Terra Australis.
When his voyages of the
