Expedition to the Mitre Peninsula, Argentina’s last wild frontier

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “Traveling to the Mitre Peninsula is like entering a time capsule,” says Christian Lagger as he recalls his experience navigating the waters of the Beagle Channel.

The marine biologist, professional, scientific diver, and National Geographic explorer was part of “The Thin Blue Line”, the first scientific expedition developed by Argentine researchers and divers. Along the main bays of Peninsula Mitre, the explorers were diving in different sites never explored before at the far end of Tierra del Fuego.

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At 17, Lagger hesitated between becoming a professional diver or a biologist, but soon he knew how to combine his passions. He also took up photography and photographed the first animals that inhabit the bottom of cold seas and witnessed the melting of glaciers due to climate change.

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Charles Darwin had been there when he was fascinated by the exuberance of the aquatic forests of giant kelp during his famous voyage on the Beagle. One hundred years later, Chilean and American scientists reached the coasts of the Peninsula to study its “macroalgae”, as they call them, for the first time.

In 2020, an expedition of the Pristine Seas team studied the same areas and made an encouraging discovery: the Mitre Peninsula was one of the last places on the planet free of human impact.

As part of the “Decade of Ocean Sciences” for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), proclaimed by the UN, the SANHV marine program of the Rewilding Argentina Foundation reinforced its commitment to promote knowledge and information about marine ecosystems.

To this end, during February and March of this year, they organized a scientific expedition to conduct an underwater survey in Peninsula Mitre, one of the most remote and least explored regions of Argentina.

THE EXPEDITION

The Argentine team planned to start their journey from Ushuaia on February 2, but the weather did not allow it. A day earlier, satellite images showed that six days of winds exceeding 40 knots were ahead. Scientific diving requires calm water and time to count algae and distinguish species, so they wait. However, that was not for the worse.

Delaying the departure allowed the diving biologists to rehearse how the underwater sampling would be done in the forests of the Mitre Peninsula.

The task of counting macroalgae is not easy, so before sinking into the deep waters, they decided to do a pilot test to train the two teams led by divers with expertise in algae and another marine animal.

Once there, they did a transect underwater, a method in which, following the path of a line on the ground, they counted everything they observed around them.

When they came out of the water, the count showed that the work of both teams was even and made them look forward to the expedition that started with two sailboats, two teams, and two objectives. They spent seven days and nights on a 12-meter sailboat that “was a real big brother,” in the biologist’s opinion.

On the Pic La Lune was the team in charge of studying the huillín, a species of otter native to Patagonia in critical danger of extinction in Tierra del Fuego, where it is estimated that there are less than 250 remainings. During the first outing, they were unable to find current signs that confirmed the presence of the huillín.

Still, during the second outing, they found records of the animal in all the bays in the south of Península Mitre, even in areas not previously described by science. There they placed camera traps that will allow them to spy on them to obtain more information and, in time, reach more accurate conclusions about the status of the species.

On the other hand, the Ksar sailboat traveled the team of experts in macroalgae forests with Lagger, and four biologists specialized in the algae of Tierra del Fuego and the fauna that lives in them. At the helm was Captain Atilio, a seasoned sailor, who bought the sailboat from the owner of the Calypso, the legendary ship that took Jacques Cousteau – and his entire audience – to see the underwater world.

“Macroalgae forests are unique places in the world. Few divers have had the privilege of swimming among 15-meter algae, which let the sunlight pass through making colorful effects, like the stained glass windows of a cathedral,” explains Daniela Campanella, a graduate and Ph.D. in Biology graduated from the National University of La Plata and the George Washington University.

“These forests are a refuge for marine fauna, protect the coasts from wave erosion, and are part of a global network of macroalgae that fight against climate change: real marine machines that remove carbon from the atmosphere”.

The first dive of the expedition was in Aguirre Bay. It was the first time Christian Lagger became entangled in the huge algae. On the last day of diving in Sloggett Bay, he was surprised by a group of sea lions.

The results of this expedition documented the importance of preserving this region which, together with these two protected areas, forms a marine corridor for hundreds of species beyond geopolitical borders.

“The protection of the Mitre Peninsula would ensure more than just pristine macroalgae forests. Today these areas constitute a drifting space between the Diego Ramirez-Paso Drake Marine Park in Chile and the Yaganes Marine Protected Area in Argentina,” considers Campanella.

Despite being home to 50% of Argentina’s kelp forests, the Peninsula is not protected. The community of Tierra del Fuego has been demanding its conservation for more than 20 years, and the threats are imminent: pollution, overfishing, potential commercial harvesting of the seaweed, and heatwaves caused by the climate crisis.

The Mitre Peninsula demonstrates why it is important that man have no impact on nature.

Macroalgae forests and eternal kilometers of wet peat, fiery red leaves of sour cherry trees, dark black sea urchins, petrified lenga trunks, and ochre-colored leaves submerged in the Beagle Channel survive despite the lack of legal protection.

“These are landscapes of land and water of the Mitre Peninsula, divided by a thin blue line, the thin layer that divides water and air but lets everything through and connects everything,” says Campanella and explains that The Thin Blue Line was the name of this expedition through bays almost impossible to navigate, where a diver had never gone before and which hid a greater objective: to reveal how much of it had been lost and what was left standing of an ecosystem as unique as it was fragile.

In the first instance, it was possible to conclude that the Peninsula Mitre Natural Protected Area gathers approximately 76% of the total area of “Macrocystis pyrifera” algae forests present in the province of Tierra del Fuego and about 50% of the estimated area for Argentina (more than 10,000 ha).

Macrocystis pyriferifera is the main forest-forming species in Peninsula Mitre, with a high density. They also contain species of algae endemic to the Fuegian oceanic phytogeographic province, such as the cochayuyo Durvillaea antarctica.

Meanwhile, kelp forests store 173 tons of carbon per year (twice the amount stored in the entire Amazon), and it is estimated that 1 km2 of kelp stores 3 thousand tons of carbon annually.

The kelp forests of Peninsula Mitre and Isla de los Estados are among the most pristine marine forest ecosystems.

The constant threat in the area is heat waves and ocean warming. This has a major impact on the Kelp. Unlike forests or jungles on land, which suffer from climate changes over a long period, small temperature changes can impact a short period on it.

It so happens that the Mitre Kelp is special because it is not disturbed or under stress, and the water temperature has not yet been affected.

MITRE PENINSULA PROTECTED AREA BILL

Although the legislative proposal has more than 30 years in the province from the Fundación Sin Azul No Hay Verde of Tierra del Fuego, they are working to approve Issue number 113/2020 within the Legislature.

“The project aims to conserve the territory of the Mitre Peninsula, which has 300 thousand hectares of land and 200 thousand of the sea. The ecological values they have are fundamental for the mitigation of the climate crisis we are going through and, on the other hand, because with the protection and creation of a protected area we can also start working on the development of the whole area,” Ángeles de la Peña, coordinator of the foundation, explained to Infobae.

De la Peña said that “the idea is that the area is enabled for people to visit it, so that tourism can be developed in a controlled manner and harmony with nature, in addition to working with the zoning and organization of the activities that can be developed within that area.”

The project has a conservation spirit and also aims at making tourism “a tool for the development and regulation of the island” because although it is already being developed, the proposal asks that it be controlled so as not to continue impacting the rest of the Peninsula “which has essential parts from the ecosystemic point of view because they are the largest peatlands of Tierra del Fuego.”

De la Peña emphasized the importance of the visits being “controlled, not massive, and not going against the conservation of the area. There will be people trained to prevent violations of the regulations,” he concluded.