Rising from the ocean depths, dazzlingly beautiful ice-cliffs, tinted with a zillion shades of blue and green and festooned with icicles, connect Antarctica to the rest of the world. They flow from the continent's interior as rivers of ice, or glaciers, and thus are fresh water. These towering palisades can reach 100 feet above the sea surface. Extending around half the coastline, this boundary can reach for miles beyond the landmass, a floating shelf of ice still attached to the continent, rising and falling imperceptibly with the tides.

At the interface of ice and open sea great explosions are heard as titanic blocks of ice are cleaved into floating vessels called icebergs, symbol of these latitudes. The largest of these "bergs," measured by satellite, was 80 miles long and 20 miles wide. They can wander around for years, occasionally running aground, only to be released again with further melting. Traveling north into warmer waters, submerged ice may melt faster than exposed, causing a rollover that can crunch flesh and bone or ships of steel.