Greenpeace expanding Ice campaign

Press, 8 March 1988, Page 4

Greenpeace expanding Ice campaign

DEBORAH

MCPHERSON i Greenpeace will be expanding its Antarctic campaign to the region’s northernmost point for the first time this winter.

A crew of 25 will leave Lyttelton tomorrow for South America, where they will pick up extra crew members in either Chile or Argentina, before heading to the Antarctic Peninsula.

Greenpeace planned! to take waste samples from

dumps and photographs of the 10 bases it hoped to visit before April 3, said the assistant engineer, Mr Torbjorn Erikson. “We will be checking out what the Americans, Russians, Spanish, Argentinians, Chileans, British and other bases are doing, and reporting that to the world,” he said. Some opposition to the trip was possible, but Antarctica was a “neutral ground,” and it was the crew’s right to take samples and photographs,

said Mr Erikson. It was the first time Greenpeace had been officially to the northern peninsula, he said. The organisation decided to extend its campaign from its base at Ross Island, once the summer season on the Ice had finished. The Greenpeace ship i would probably take about three weeks to get to South America. ;It would have to leave Antarctica by April 3, before the weather made it too tough, said Mr Erikson.