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Weather Guru
Thu Mar 03, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. Meteorologist Jack Williams has
published a new book The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Arctic and Antarctic following a
1999 visit to the South Pole.
BRYAN: Why do you think there's such a focus on Antarctica?
JACK: Well, Shackelton's story, of course. They were going to land on the part of
Antarctica south of the Atlantic Ocean and cross the whole continent - which would
have been a first. The ship got caught in the ice. It drifted with the ice for a long time
then the ice finally broke the ship apart and everyone survived.
I'd never written much about biology, biological sciences, and doing the book required
me to learn a lot about how life lives in the Arctic, lives in the Antarctic. Most people
know, although you might not, that you know polar bears live in the Arctic and penguins
live in the Antarctic and penguins would never be able to live the way they do in a place
with polar bears because polar bears would find them very easy eating.
BRYAN: Tasty.
JACK: Right. Tasty. Whereas, in the Arctic the seals have managed to survived
because they've essentially found ways to hide from polar bears and to run and dive
into a hole in the ice when they see a polar bear coming.
BRYAN: So, you became a researcher again.
JACK: Oh, exactly. Not only with explorers, with the wildlife, and all of the life including
algae that lives on the bottom of the ice and is the basis of the food web and the
oceans, in the Arctic Ocean and also the southern ocean around Antarctica.
Our show is funded by grants from Subaru of America, and The National Science
Foundation.
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