Public interest has focused on Antarctica only for brief periods : when fortunes were made slaughtering seals, when brave men struggled to be first at the pole, during the International Geophysical Year in the late 1950s and, most recently, during the Falklands War in the South Atlantic. This last unexplored continent has now ree-tered public consciousness becouse of the expectation that ist profusion of shrimplike krill might yield a bounty of oil and gas. This fact-packed study discusses these expectations and how they will affect review of the Antarctic Treaty by the fourteen member nations, and it examines the chances for this region tobe preserved for peacefull use alone, as a common heritage of mankind. //yn
