8 Oceans

Fall 2008

The kayaking journeys of Jon Bowermaster

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

by John Kimantas

8. For five weeks in 2008 Bowermaster and his team explored the Antarctic Peninsula by sea kayak and sail – including rough crossings of Drake Passage, beautiful days of blue sky as well as storms and torrential rains. The goal was a look at how the peninsula is evolving thanks to warming temperatures and increasing numbers of tourists. (The numbers on photo captions match the order in which the trips were taken. )

YOU CAN’T PLAN on good weather visiting Antarctica, but somehow Jon Bowermaster got a lucky break.

Arriving at the peak of summer, the National Geographic writer and explorer and his team found themselves in the midst of two and a half weeks of perfect blue skies and temperatures upwards of a balmy (by Antarctic standards) 40 degrees Fahrenheit – conditions that made the ocean and glaciers a wonderland of blue and white hues.

But the Antarctic can be a tricky place, and in time the blue skies turned to an unlikely week of torrential rain. Widely considered the driest desert on the planet, the Antarctic rain bogged down Bowermaster’s crew with slush, winds and ice-encrusted kayaks – in an area that isn't supposed to see rain.

Could this be yet another signal of global warming? Bowermaster's concerns were fortified by a visit to the Ukrainian Antarctic science base Academik Vernadsky on Galindez Island. Fifty years of weather data showed an undeniable warming trend.

1. In June and July 1999 Bowermaster was part of a three-week long journey halfway between Russia and Alaska on the Aleutians to a an area of active volcanoes the Aleuts called 'the birthplace of the winds.' Two 21-foot kayaks carried everything the four needed for five weeks.

While melting ice is one concern – the winter ice can extend 7.2 million square miles, or about twice the size of the United States – rain is a new one. Bowermaster watched the results take their toll on penguins, which have never had to deal with this phenomenon before.

“The chicks get soaked with rain and the parents can’t dry them off, so at night they freeze,” Bowermaster said. “So it’s not just about ice. It’s about wildlife.”

The Antarctic trip was Bowermaster’s last in the Oceans 8 series of kayaking expeditions that first began in 1999 with a trip to the Aleutian Islands. The goal was to travel each of the seven continents, plus Oceania, over the next decade by kayak. Supported by the National Geographic Expeditions Council, Bowermaster and his group of adventurers began with a five-week journey to where the Pacific Ocean joins the Bering Sea, a place the Aleuts called the “birthplace of the winds.”

The name was a hint of just one of the many hazards they would encounter, made tougher by the need for crossings as long as 17 miles. Strong winds, cold water and more than the occasional storm slowed their goal of reaching the remote chain of five volcanic mountain islands. The highest, 6,000-foot-high Mount Cleveland, was tamed during a 15-hour ascent, where the most dangerous element became not the strong winds and snow but the poisonous gases blowing off the crater of the still-active volcano.

(Ironically, Mount Cleveland erupted just a few days after my interview with Bowermaster in July. “As beautiful as those islands and beaches are, you would not want to be camped on them when Cleveland sends ash three to five miles into the sky,” he wrote back after I emailed him about the news.)

NOT ALL TRIPS Bowermaster took were quite as cold as the Aleutians. Politics were a major hurdle in heading to Vietnam, where kayaks were not allowed until a “filming permit” was paid. The goal was to paddle the coast from near Mong Cai on the Chinese border 800 miles south to Hoi An, south of Danang. It was a chance to see the country post-war in a way few will ever get to see it.

2. One-third of Vietnam's 80-million people live near the ocean, so getting around meant improvising in the population centres. In Hoi An, hiring cyclos was the solution in getting to the water's edge. Right: Jon Bowermaster.

Ocean conditions were the last concern on the trip through Bolivia, Argentina and Peru, where Bowermaster and his crew were forced to pull kayaks across the bone-dry Salar de Uyuni, a 40-by-120 mile salt lake – the world’s largest.

The goal was South America’s Altiplano, the mountainous desert region crossing the borders of all three countries. Pulling kayaks for much of the six weeks the group went in search of water in mostly dry lake beds as old as 2 million years. Once covered by ocean and more recently as large lakes as little as12,000 years ago, they remain a treasure trove of corals and fossils left behind by the ancient sea life.

Hauling the kayaks across the salt beds became a symbol of the change in conditions in a land where rich lakes once resided.

Remarkably, people have lived here for 10,000 years. Inspired to find out how they have survived in such an arid climate, Bowermaster’s visit ended atop the tallest volcano in the region: Bolivia’s Licanbur, a peak that at 19,600 feet looks out over the Altiplano and Lago Verde.

7. Bowermaster rates this one of the most stunning views he's had from a kayak – Cape Pillar, a rock stack that soars 1,000 feet from the sea at the Tasman Peninsula.

A new hazard for the kayakers in the exploration of Loango, the new national park in Gabon, West Africa, was large land mammals. The 200-mile journey in 2004 around the park’s ocean shoreline was met by river-swimming elephants, manatees, surfing hippos and gorillas. It was a chance for National Geographic Society member Mike Fay to finish his explorations of the Congo, many areas of which can only be explored by water. Earlier Fay had done an extensive land-based exploration – a 2,000-mile, two-and-a-half year walk through the dense jungles of the Congo. His efforts helped create 13 new national parks in Gabon.

Hottest of all the trips, though, proved to be Croatia’s Dalmation coast in summer 2005. Travel was possible only in the early morning and late evening as the crew paddled through the 1,246 islands off Croatia that dot the Adriatic Sea.

The goal was to kayak the country’s length along the Adriatic.

Joined by photographer Peter McBride and videographer Alex Nicks, the group kayaked 400 miles, from Zadar to Dubrovnik, staying among the sun-drenched archipelagos.

Of all the locations he’s traveled, Bowermaster considers Croatia's coast the most accessible as a kayaking holiday resort. But he has a personal soft spot for Oceania. The destination in 2002 was the Tuamotus, a group of about 78 coral reef atolls set in a string about 930 miles north-northeast of Tahiti. The Polynesian name means ‘Distant Islands,’ an apt description of what Bowermaster considers “tiny green oases floating in the desert of the sea.”

6. The Croatian journey of 2005 started in the Zrmanja River, which leads to the Adriatic in a trip that required running rapids and this 40-foot horseshoe waterfall.

“I’ve returned several times since, so it must have a special attraction for me,” Bowermaster said.

The eight trips were not just adventures for their own sake. For Bowermaster they were a chance to document the relationship between humans and the sea, and the changes occurring as the coastal human population grows and the climate warms. In Polynesia, the problem is a rising ocean and increased storms that threaten the atolls’ future. Elsewhere Bowermaster sees two recurring themes: climate change bringing increased storms and the worldwide plague of plastic pollution. Add overfishing, and Bowermaster believes the lives shared by coastal people from Chile to Croatia to Vietnam are not that different after all.

With the Oceans 8 series complete, Bowermaster is continuing to turn his attention to the changing and tenuous relationship of humans and the sea with a new series of trips that has already taken him to the Galapagos Islands and will likely take him to Greenland, Mexico and other locations around the world at later dates.

5. Paddling upriver through Loango National Park in Gabon meant improvising campsites, in this case setting up tents over the kayaks in a flooded forest. The result was surprisingly comfortable – except for photographer Peter McBride, who had his kayak flood during the night.

But after dragging and transporting kayaks across deserts in South America’s Altiplano and through political barriers, Bowermaster said in future they’ll likely buy or rent kayaks at the locations rather than bring them along.

His first National Geographic assignment took place 20 years ago, an adventure covering a dogsled expedition across first Greenland and then Antarctica. Now Bowermaster is turning his attention to the story rather than the adventure. And he hopes the message from his efforts is getting through.

“I talk to a lot of schools and people don’t say kids care about adventures anymore because they’re too focused on their Gameboys. But when I show pictures and talk about life out there kids get turned on. Even with adults – I don’t think people think often about what we do and how it impacts on all our oceans.”

Jon Bowermaster was a featured speaker at the Trade Association of Paddlesports’ 25th West Coast Sea Kayak Symposium Sept. 19-21, 2008, in Port Townsend, Washington. For more on his trips, DVDs and books, visit his website at www.jonbowermaster.com.