Polar Passport

Back to the South

The field work in New Guinea went well, and after a holiday in Tasmania I am now doing what I like best: sailing to Antarctica.

I'm not involved in the International Polar Year activities with the Australian Antarctic Division in the 2007-08 summer. Our solar-powered remote GPS stations, which I installed and maintained last summer, woke from their hibernation in the spring when the sun returned, and have been sending back data by satellite.

While they are doing their work in Australian Antarctic Territory, I have taken a few weeks leave from my job and flown to Argentina. From Ushuaia, the world's southermost city I will sail with the beautiful Barque Europa, a sail training vessel which makes voyages of three weeks to the Antarctic Peninsula.

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There are 16 crew, and 40 trainees who learn to sail an old-fashioned square-rigged ship while seeing some of Antarctica's most spectacular scenery. I am working as one of the three guides on board, who arrange the programme, ensure the safety of the passengers, and keep them informed about the wildlife, science and history in the places we visit.

Ushuaia is a beautiful city at the southern end of the island of Tierra del Fuego. A safe harbour on the Beagle Channel (named for Charles Darwin's ship, which spent a long time in this area in the 1830's) is surrounded by dense forest and steep mountains, snowy even in the middle of summer. About 30 000 tourists will visit Antarctica this summer, and most of them will be on board ships leaving from Ushuaia.

This evening there is no wind, but after we leave tomorrow we will sail for four days across the Drake Passage, south of Cape Horn, where the wind and waves can be among the wildest in all the world's oceans.

We will spend two weeks sailing on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula. This land extends further north than the rest of the continent, and attracts a rich array of wildlife - many species of penguins, seals, whales and seabirds come here in the summer to breed or feed. Over recent decades it has also warmed faster than almost anywhere on the planet, which is already having noticeable effects on the glaciers, plants and animals.

Email from the ship is possible by short-wave radio or satellite, but I think I will be too busy working to update this blog in the next three weeks. If you want to know what we are doing, you can read the regular “log book” reports on the ship's own website. When I return I will update this site with my own impressions, and answer any questions that have been posted.

Happy New International Polar Year,

Dan

Ice in the sea

The last few days have been very exciting: the sea is full of ice!

South of 60 degrees latitude, the winds are weaker and the waves smaller, so our ride is much more comfortable. First, we started passing more and more icebergs, of all shapes and sizes. Some are like castles, others have beautiful curves, because they have rolled upside down and we can see the parts worn smooth by the sea. The biggest ones are flat on top, with cliffs about 20 m high. They are big chunks that have broken off floating glaciers around the coast of Antarctica.

The icebergs look enormous, but it's amazing to think that most of an iceberg is underneath the water: these ones are 100 or 200 m deep. We saw several big ones, around 2 km long, but they are dwarfed by the one I can see out my cabin window right now: it is 80 km long and 30 km wide! It stretches to the horizon, and is big enough to see in the satellite pictures we use to check the weather conditions (NOAA image, courtesy BoM and AAD).

As well as icebergs, there is a lot of sea ice. This forms every winter, when the sea freezes. In the summer, it breaks up into big flat pieces called 'floes', which drift around, and eventually melt. Where we are now, the floes are large, about 100 m across, and cover the ocean as far as we can see in all directions, with only small gaps of water in between.

The ice is really beautiful, but quite difficult for the ship to travel through: we twist and turn to follow the water leads between the ice floes, but sometimes we have to break through them too. The ship bangs and shakes when we hit a big piece, and the front of the ship pushes up on top of the ice. The weight of the ship cracks the ice, and we push through.

The best place to be when we are icebreaking is right on the front of the ship, where you can feel the shaking and hear the crashing of the ice, but if you want to stay warm, it's almost as good to be inside on the ship's bridge, with big windows looking in all directions.

It's got a bit colder: the air temperature is now about -2°C. The Sun is shining and there's only a light breeze, so it's quite comfortable.

The sea is also colder: it's now -1.5°C. Fresh water freezes at zero degrees, but because the sea is salty, it can get colder, and freezes at about -1.8°C. We've also been seeing some real antarctic animals in the ice: small black-and-white Adelie penguins, larger Emperor penguins, lots of crabeater seals, and a couple of whales, as well as several types of birds flying around the ship: various petrels, fulmars and skuas.

We're only about 200 km from Davis Station now, and will probably be close enough tomorrow to fly there by helicopter. Yesterday, we checked all our clothes and bags to make sure we aren't taking any foreign plants that might grow in Antarctica. It's not likely, but it's good to make sure, so we vacuum cleaned our bags, pockets and shoes.

Next blog entry will be from Davis Station, or maybe out in a field camp!

Almost there,

Dan