S E C T A S A U R™ -  ANTARCTIC GOLD RUSH

RETURN TO  BASECAMP OR EXPLORE OUR PREHISTORIC A-Z

The artwork is also suitable for use in "Jimmy Watson's Magic Dinobot." A proposed network TV serialization, about boy who saves his paper round money to buy himself a robot for Christmas. Then, when assembled, it come to life, to become his friend. ARTWORK - Somewhat better than the huge ants in "Them," but perhaps not as good as the CGI in Antman. Now a museum exhibit in Sussex, England. The artwork is based on an Australian Bulldog ant.

<<< TUNNEL COMPLEX

CHAPTER 3: GOLD RUSH - Three new expeditions are launched by competing concerns, the first a Swedish venture led by a headstrong, Bjorn Atlas, and his navigator/geologist, Sven Johansson. The second expedition is a multinational (Canadian, US) effort lead by Cathy Carter with 3 veteran arctic explorers. The third expedition is a private enterprise secretly (part) funded by Chinese Triads, through pharmaceutical company, under the leadership of Lin Po Chang, a child genius and infamous martial arts champion - and his two dedicated henchmen. In reality, China is pushing mineral wealth acquisition, for commercial world dominance agenda. Having moved on from tea exports, to copper, aluminium, vehicles, lithium for batteries and even the attainment of ports, to smooth world trade aspirations.

A race ensues where the teams vie with each other, to secure the archaeological prize that is there for the taking, as the immediate realizable asset. Lin Po Chang, is not only a master of the martial arts (Taekwondo & Karate) but also a keen paleontologist, who predicted the existence of variant life-forms on this continent and has more than a hunch as to the inhabitants of this tunnel complex.

A startling discovery in the ice, sharp jaws protruding from a block of solid ice.

Charles Wilkes’ rehabilitation reflected the changing power dynamics of the great polar game. The British and French eventually ceded the argument, and corresponding territory, to the United States as the world’s emerging polar power. During the Cold War, the United States continued to assert its leadership in Antarctic affairs, brokering the international Antarctic Treaty of 1958 and investing in cutting-edge polar research. Much of what we know about climate change, for instance, comes from secrets revealed in drilling Antarctic ice cores, an outgrowth of America’s interest in polar science.

The Antarctic landscape changed, and not just from melting glaciers. America’s interest in Antarctica waned, and so too is its influence.

In the decade following the 2008 global recession, funding for the Office of Polar Programs, which oversees American facilities and research in Antarctica, fell by 8 percent. Plans for the long-overdue replacement of aging facilities at McMurdo Station, the United States’ Antarctic headquarters, were drawn up during the Obama administration, but a further proposed cut of more than 10 percent in the 2021 budget places those rebuilding plans in jeopardy just as work is set to begin. Without modernization of McMurdo, which in its size and sophistication has long been the envy of other nations, the perception of America’s declining interest in Antarctica will grow.

China, long relegated to spectator status in Antarctic affairs, stands to gain the most. With four Antarctic stations already, China is now in the advanced planning stages for a fifth station - this one to be located in the heart of “downtown” Antarctica, on an island in the Ross Sea adjacent to McMurdo. The image of a rusting, outdated American station alongside a gleaming, state-of-the-art Chinese facility will communicate more clearly than a hundred polar policy papers the reality of the power transfer already under way in Antarctica, where China’s investments in icebreakers, communications hardware, and station infrastructure dwarfs that of other nations, including the United States.

The French, British, and American expeditions of the 1840s sailed south in the hope of discovering a Terra Australis laden with mineral treasures, only to find towering glaciers and deathly cold. A couple of centuries later, it’s China that is determined to reap Antarctica’s mineral riches.

As the northern ice melts, the Arctic Ocean is already the scene of international jockeying for mining rights. But as China scholar Anne-Marie Brady has documented extensively, Beijing views Antarctica as the last great terrestrial frontier on Earth, hosting great deposits of coal, natural gas, precious minerals, added to plentiful fish stocks in the surrounding ocean and even vast freshwater reserves locked up in Antarctic ice. China intends to exploit the continent fully once the current Antarctic Treaty expires in 2048. With nations hungry for new sources of oil and mineral wealth, and China laying the groundwork for industrialization of the pole, the stakes for Antarctica couldn’t be higher.

The obvious irony of this new Antarctic Gold-Rush, is that with glaciers already melting, the consequent sea-level rise threatens to inundate coastal cities across the globe. Begging the question as to why any government would make plans to exacerbate global warming by exploiting fossil fuel reserves in Antarctica? An ice free Wilkes Land, could end with oil fields, or strip-mining in the forested Transantarctic Mountains that are currently buried in ice. It seems this is the future that Beijing is planning, even though public pronouncements from China conform to the diplomatic polar language of international collaboration. China is pursuing an international grab for control of minerals, as part of their commercial world domination.

>>> UN CALL FOR JOHN STORM

  RAPIDLY MELTING ICE CAPS AND BOILING OCEANS, LEAD TO THE DISCOVERY OF A PREHISTORIC GIANT ANT - THAT TURNS OUT TO BE A FRIENDLY SPECIES -  AS JOHN STORM AND CHARLEY TEMPLE DISCOVER - TOO LATE TO SAVE SECTASAUR

SEE OUR PREHISTORIC NAVIGATOR OR RETURN TO BASECAMP

This website is Copyright © 2023 Cleaner Ocean Foundation and Jameson Hunter Ltd.

Copyright is asserted as per sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names and Characters are the product of the authors' imaginations, 

and any resemblance to any person, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

Elizabeth Swann™ and John Storm™ are trademarks. All rights reserved.