With almost no plant life covering its exposed rocks, Antarctica is a paradise for both geologists and amateur rockhounds alike. Until now, however, there has not been a good photographic guide to Antarctic geology for the layman. Bill Romey’s Illustrated Guide answers that need very admirably.
Professor of geography emeritus at St. Lawrence University and a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Explorers Club, Romey has done geological research in northern California, the Adirondacks, and Norway. After 22 years of teaching geology and geography at St. Lawrence, he has spent the last 15 years working as a shipboard lecturer and geologist on tour ships in Antarctica and elsewhere.
Romey wrote this guide to encourage Antarctic tourists “to look at some specifics of the geology in areas you may visit” and even suggests that “just as birders keep “life lists” of bird species they’ve spotted, you can also begin a “life list” of geologic features and rock types to enrich your visit and help you remember what you’ve seen.”
This electronic book has four parts. The first, “Introduction, Cape Horn and Ushuaia,” runs 23 pages and includes a very helpful glossary of geological terms.
The Antarctic Peninsula (130 pages) section covers approximately 50 locations, including all of the main geological sites of interest commonly seen on tourist cruises: Hannah Point’s basalt “Big Damn Rock” and wide horizontal vein of red jasper; the turquoise-colored streak of copper mineralization (possibly malachite) on the cliffs near Argentina’s Brown station; the Aitcho Islands’ organ-pipe structures of columnar jointing; Pleneau Island’s smoothly polished, well-jointed granites; the two big boulders at Walker Bay “set up as a veritable ‘museum of paleontology and vertebrate anatomy’ by naturalists like me who have found objects of interest along this beach”; and Baily Head’s consolidated layers of volcanic ash in the cliff just south of the long blacksand landing beach.
Romey also writes about lesser-noticed phenomena of interest—often in heavily-trafficked areas. Of Deception Island’s Neptune’s Bellows, he notes the reddish, conical structure just to the left of the entry: “A small satellite volcanic cone here has been sliced in half by erosion, revealing a marvelous view of the inside structure…It’s a picture that confirms the accuracy of many text-book drawings of cross sections through volcanoes.” At Petermann Island, he points out that the rock “contains abundant rounded xenoliths from 15-60 cm in diameter of a fine-grained black basaltic material (greenstone?)." And at Hydrurga Rocks, he gives a “field name” to the spotted stone, calling it “leopard rock” in a double pun, since the islands’ appellation comes from the leopard seal’s scientific name, Hydrurga leptonyx.
The 45-page South Georgia chapter covers 20 sites. Of Albatross Island in the Bay of Isles, Romey writes a lament that he seems to feel at all landings: “Many visitors are so intent upon getting up to see the albatrosses that they fail to appreciate the geology at their feet.” The large folds in the rock cliffs at Stromness—which told Shackleton that he had arrived at the correct bay after his epic crossing of the island—are beautifully illustrated, and another highlight is a series of 11 photos showing the steady retreat of the two big glaciers at Gold Harbor between 1994 and 2004.
A dozen places in the Falklands, including the islands’ famous “stone runs,” are covered in 24 pages. In Stanley, Romey does some geological detective work, revealing the fact that the Cathedral’s beautiful, even-grained sandstone was not quarried locally, but was “brought all the way from England by homesick settlers.”
Because this guide is on a CD, its hundreds of color photographs can be enlarged on the computer for enhanced viewing. A magnification of 200%, for example, brings out additional details. Unfortunately, in order to fit as many images as possible on the disc, they are not scanned at their highest resolution, meaning that at higher magnifications, focus is lost. Nevertheless, for anyone interested in Antarctic geology, this guide is a must. The CD is available from Ash Lad Press at P.O. Box 294, East Orleans, MA 02643 or via email <romeywd@comcast.net>
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