SKELLIG Michael, Inis Tuaisceart, Antrim's Fair Head - who says and has no territory in Antarctica? It was while perched on a snow peak overlooking another Irish outpost that we witnessed a mini-Sherkin being formed this week from a thawing polar ice edge.
Not that the Argentinian scientists at Almirante Brown station would be familiar with the west Cork coastline, or appreciate the many ice shapes resembling other Irish landmarks, as they watched the new berg rumble down the cliffs and float out into the bay. Known as a "calve", the berg is formed by constant pressure on the glaciers which creates shelves as they run through mountain interstices to the sea.
Described as the "most aptly named place in the world", Paradise Harbour is strewn with floating ice known as "brash". In winter, it can coalesce, forming fast ice or pancake ice from the shore. In summer, it offers shelter on the western flank of the Antarctic peninsula.
If the white continent is the globe's weather-making machine, ice plays no small part. Every Antarctic autumn, a carpet twice the size of the US begins to grow at 22 square miles a minute, so generating an ocean current that helps regulate our climate.
The Argentinian base director who welcomed the Russian ship, Professor Molchanov, this week had already heard of the South Aris Irish Antarctic Expedition on the "berg" telegraph. He was well aware of the particular significance for his station. Almirante William Brown, founder of the Argentine navy, was an "adventurer" from Foxford, Co Mayo.
The sheltered haven obviously was not heaven to the station's previous doctor, who burned it down in April 1984. Now rebuilt, it houses seven scientists and four logistical staff. Their national flag flies proudly from the wooden jetty, while a Marian grotto has been built into the granite rock.
Further north - across the strait named after Corkman Bransfield - a portrait of the Chilean-Irish revolutionary, Bernardo O'Higgins, hangs in another research base. Marsh Station is more like a military, rather than scientific, outpost, other scientists on King George Island in the South Shetlands complain. As part of Chile's drive to stake its claim to Antarctic territory, its government has encouraged families to settle here.
Santiago, Buenos Aires and London are regarded as the worst flag-flying administrations within King George Island's "science city", the most densely populated research area in Antarctica. Uruguay, Germany, Korea and Russia are also represented, while the Chinese station across the moraine is known as the Great Wall.
The main focus of study is penguin colonies on the Fildes peninsula, where there are lawns of green moss and over 100 species of lichen. Unusually, Gentoo, Adelie and Chinstrap penguins nest together here, without inter- breeding.
The aggressive skuas are the subject of a DM4.5 million programme to solve stalling in aeroplanes, because the bird's dive-bombing habits make for easier photographs of their wings.
Out at the creche, the scientists talked of the penguin practice of shared parenting. Both sexes take turns to incubate the eggs and feed the young, but the Emperor and King are masters at this. These males will happily balance a single egg on their feet, cover it with a brood pouch and shuffle around for all of two months, while the females are out feasting off squid and krill.
Such democratic practices must have impressed the all-male Irish crew of the Tom Crean during its recent landing on Elephant Island, before setting off for South Georgia at the weekend. On last contact, the cabin was "beginning to smell" and some 100 miles had been put between them and Elephant's north-east coast.
Radio communication has been patchy over the last 48 hours, however, as the Professor Molchanov, from which The Irish Times has been reporting, makes it way back up from Antarctica to Tierra del Fuego.
Weather in the Drake Passage is sloppy, and such is the ship's roll as I write that the wheel house telephone antenna cannot pick up a satellite. That's why this dispatch comes to you by telex - good, reliable, old technology.
