page_title: McMurdo Sound
section_title: Seascape reveals human impact
hierarchical_section_title: McMurdo Sound / Seascape reveals human impact
caption_attribution_description: English: Erebus Ice Tongue (see ice tongue), coming off the Erebus glacier from Mount Erebus, Ross Island, Antarctica. The ice tongue is protruding into McMurdo Sound (frozen in this image). Français&#160;: Image satellite d'une partie du détroit de McMurdo montrant l'île de Ross en haut et à droite et le glacier Erebus au centre.
context_page_description: McMurdo Sound and its ice-clogged waters extends about 55 kilometres long and wide. The sound connects the Ross Sea to the north with the Ross Ice Shelf cavity to the south via Haskell Strait. The strait is largely covered by the McMurdo Ice Shelf. The Royal Society Range rises from sea level to 4,205 metres on the western shoreline. Ross Island, an historic jumping-off point for polar explorers, designates the eastern boundary. The active volcano Mount Erebus at 3,794 metres dominates Ross Island. Antarctica's largest scientific base, the United States' McMurdo Station, as well as the New Zealand Scott Base are on the southern shore of the island. Less than 10 percent of McMurdo Sound's shoreline is free of ice. It is the southernmost navigable body of water in the world.
  Captain James Clark Ross discovered this sound, which is about 1,300 kilometres from the South Pole, in February 1841, and he named it after Lt. Archibald McMurdo of HMS Terror. The sound today serves as a resupply route for cargo ships and for airplanes that land on the floating ice airstrips near the McMurdo Station.
context_section_description: More than 50 years of continuous operation of the United States and New Zealand bases on Ross Island have left pockets of severe pollution marring McMurdo Sound's pristine environment. Until 1981, McMurdo Station residents simply towed their garbage out to the sea ice and let nature take its course. The garbage sank to the sea floor when the ice broke up in the spring, according to news reports.
  A 2001 survey of the seabed near McMurdo revealed 15 vehicles, 26 shipping containers, and 603 fuel drums, as well as some 1,000 miscellaneous items dumped on an area of some 20 hectares (49 acres). Findings by scuba divers were reported in the State of the Environment Report, a New Zealand sponsored study.
  The study by the government agency Antarctica New Zealand revealed that decades of daily pumping thousands of gallons of raw sewage from 1,200 summer residents into the sound had fouled Winter Quarters Bay, the harbor at McMurdo. The pollution ended in 2003 when a $5 million waste treatment plant went online. Other documented bay water contaminants include leakage from an open dump at the station. The dump introduced heavy metals, petroleum compounds, and chemicals into the water.
  Zoologist Clive Evans from Auckland University described McMurdo's harbor as "one of the most polluted harbors in the world in terms of oil", according to a 2004 article by the New Zealand Herald.
  Modern operations in McMurdo Sound have sparked surface cleanup efforts, recycling, and exporting trash and other contaminants by ship. The U.S. National Science Foundation began a 5-year, $30-million cleanup program in 1989, according to Reuters News Agency. The concentrated effort targeted the open dump at McMurdo. By 2003, the U.S. Antarctic Program reported recycling approximately 70% of its wastes, according to Australia's Herald Sun.
  The 1989 cleanup included workers testing hundreds of barrels at the dump site, mostly full of fuels and human waste, for identification before they are loaded onto a freighter for exportation. The precedent for exporting wastes began in 1971. The United States shipped out tons of radiation-contaminated soil after officials shut down a small nuclear power plant.
  Yet the very ships involved in supporting the export of McMurdo Station's waste present pollution hazards themselves. A study by the Australian Institute of Marine Science found that anti-fouling paints on the hulls of icebreakers are polluting McMurdo Sound. Such paints kill algae, barnacles, and other marine life that adhere to ship hulls. Scientists found that samples taken from the ocean floor contained high levels of tributyltin (TBT), a component of the anti-fouling paints. "The levels are close to the maximum, you will find anywhere, apart from ship grounding sites", said Andrew Negri of the institute.
  Ships, aircraft, and land-based operations in McMurdo Sound all present hazards of oil spills or fuel leaks. For instance, in 2003, the build-up of two years of difficult ice conditions blocked the U.S. tanker MV Richard G. Matthiesen from reaching the harbor at McMurdo Station, despite the assistance of icebreakers. Instead shore workers rigged a temporary 5.6-kilometre (3.5 mi) fuel line over the ice pack to discharge the ship's cargo. The ship pumped more than 23 million litres (6.1 million US gallons) of fuel to storage facilities at McMurdo.
  Officials balance the potential for fuel spills inherent in such operations against the critical need to keep McMurdo Station supplied with oil. A fuel tank spill in an unrelated onshore incident in 2003 spilled roughly 25,000 litres (6,600 US gallons) of Diesel fuel at a helicopter pad at McMurdo Station. The 1989 grounding of the Argentinean ship Bahía Paraíso and subsequent spillage of 640,000 litres (170,000 US gallons) of oil into the sea near the Antarctic Peninsula showed the environmental hazards inherent in supply missions to Antarctica.
caption: The Erebus Ice Tongue near the ship channel used during annual resupply missions to McMurdo Station (NASA)
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