Jeff Kerby

18/04/2025

Unlike my last post, these (northern) fur seals are in Russia living on a small island in the Sea of Okhotsk. They too were slaughtered here (there was even a slaughter factory built on the this island during the Soviet Period!). Their population here remains incredibly high. There are about 50,000 on this island, one tenth of what were taken in Antarctica in just a few years in the 1820s.

Photos from 2019.

18/04/2025

The rather lurid writing of Sealer N. Ames on his time in Antarctica in 1821, a year after the continent’s existence was first confirmed:

“…we unexpectedly came across an old wig (seal) on an immensely high cliff. He was probably rusticating to avoid the extermination that was raging on the coast. It was immediately resolved that he should be compelled to jump off the cliff forthwith, a resolution that we put in to practice…I ran and looked over the edge of the cliff and saw him bouncing like a football from one projection to another til he alighted in the surf below…By way of appeasing him, we kicked off a score of penguins that had colonised the place.’

What a quaint little anecdote… Also, it speaks to how in less than 5 years the entire seal population of the South Shetlands was essentially wiped out in one of the world’s great butcherings. People didn’t wait long to make their impact on this ‘untrammeled land’.

This is a little studied era, but a few archeologists and historians have cracked the door open on the early years of human visitation to the continent.

Some photos from our February survey .polar

21/03/2025

One thing I’ve learned from our madcap project across all of the South Shetlands - every photo *must* have an outsized penguin in the foreground.

Here I present the ruins of the Aguirre Cerda Base on Deception Island. It was wiped away in the midst of volcanic activity on the island in 1967. This event also delegated the ‘cove’ part of its location at Pendulum Cove to an abstract historical oddity. Why would someone name a beach a cove…?

A ‘red penguin’ / archeologist, Nathaniel Kitchel also lurks in the background.
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03/03/2025

After a month surveying the maritime Antarctic, I’m left with a mix of feelings and contradicting perspectives about natural beauty and human history in the region. One enduring take home is that this place was very different just a few centuries ago. Most beaches are littered with whale bones by oilers a century ago or are noticeably absent of the hordes of seals that drew people here by their THOUSANDS in the 1820s. Now these green landscapes abound with bird life and pockets of seals, but what will they look like a century from now? One thing is for sure: not like they do now. It’s exciting to be working in an area where we clarify these visions of both the past and future.

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24/02/2025

Assorted snapshots from Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands - taken while on a broad scientific survey.

So much to process from this extraordinary place as I recalibrate my entire perspective on the maritime Antarctic.

We’re now starting our sail back across the Drake and soon my thoughts will turn to trying to keep my lunch down….

Much more to come from this in the months ahead!

.polar

15/02/2025

Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands are full of contrasts. Emerald pockets of land amidst caps of ice and foaming seas. Some areas are heavily visited on the tourist ‘milk run’ whereas the jagged rocks guarding nearby coasts mean few if any visitors land there at all. On these shores, clues to pasts and futures as yet unwritten are there to observe - if you’re lucky enough to get a good weather day!

Polar

01/01/2025

Life abounds even at the northern edge of land on the planet. Peary Land in Northern Greenland is as far north as you can walk on terra firma - these are unpublished scenes from the .all.life expedition to the top of the world. 1. dodging a long tailed skua while hauling gear. 2. far camp en route to Inuit Qeqertaat (Kaffeklubben Island) along a glacial melt river. 3. far camp with Inuit Qeqertaat on the horizon, just a days hike away. 4. A rare view of the northernmost island on earth. See our little raft for scale. 5. .buma and first glimpse of the island while we flew in. This was a fun photo to make! 6. trekking back from our only trip out to the island before the weather changed our trip from exploration to survival. 7. Muskoxen somehow survive on the sparse vegetation in this polar desert. 8. .buma extracting isotope samples from a storm blasted snow bank.
An supported expedition. Mostly unpublished photos from a assignment.

Which photo would you like a behind the scenes Insta story on?

21/11/2024

At the northern coastline of the world, what’s big is small and what’s small is big. Peary Land in N Greenland is rarely visited and extremely difficult to access. There are no human settlement, no access by sea (permanent sea ice), and none by land (mountains to the south protect this polar desert). Joining .buma, , and in the search for the northernmost flower (and much more!) was memorable but exhausting. After being left at a staging point by the Twin Otter plane, we hiked hundreds of kilograms of gear across dozens of kilometers, crossing melt rivers and ankle-breaking tussock fields. Eventually, we set up advanced camp with Inuit Qeqertaat (Kaffeklubben Island) in view. This is the northernmost land on earth - National Geographic has recently revised their world atlas to reflect this - and there we ultimately found the northernmost flower (not shown on this post - can you guess what it was?). Despite the endless summer daylight, our exploration turned into survival when a blizzard struck and trapped us in our tents for over a week. In July. I dream of going back. .all.life

20/08/2024

An arctic fox kit snacking on a goose on the north coast of Greenland. This scene is from a mid-summer blizzard the .all.life team encountered on our July 2023 supported expedition in search of the world’s northernmost flower. This certainly slowed down plant surveys, but pushed the team into new areas and routines that revealed scenes of northern Greenland that we would have missed otherwise.

09/05/2024

My photo essay on the hunt for the northernmost flower with Brian Buma, Aka Simonsen, and Alejandra Borunda is now out on National Geographic! Northern Greenland threw up some tough obstacles, but it's exciting to share the first glimpses of this broader project. Supported by the National Geographic Society

Scientists journeyed to a stretch of gravel off the coast of Greenland—the farthest north you can go and still walk on land. These photos show what they found there.

13/02/2024

Swirls of ice, sea-, and freshwater commingle in a little visited fjord in northeast Greenland. Amidst these beautiful patterns are clues to a bigger story about changing climate and the world’s oceans. Scientists like and colleagues at are busy at work to fit these pieces all together, giving us insights into a future that is arriving fast.

This image is from the Northeast Greenland National Park, a nearly one million square kilometer of wilderness encompassing fjords, tundra and a huge stretch of the inland ice sheet. The nearest town is Ittoqqortoormiit, just south of the park.

27/09/2023

Rhoss Fjord, Northeast Greenland. | Going through imagery from recent summers and realizing I’ve never shared most of it. Here’s a start - one of my favorite places and one that is very rarely visited , the terminus of Rhoss Fjord. I could stare at this landscape for days!