Sunday 7 February

Antarctica Day 2

Today’s program has us whale watching from the ship this morning, and zodiac cruise this afternoon. The day dawned white and snowing - the railings and chairs on our balconies, and the whole top of the ship, are covered in snow! The weather is not in our favour for landings. 

It is magic watching the snow on the water – the water temperature is below zero for it to start to freeze (at least -1.9°). Such pretty patterns caused by this. This is the beginning of sheet ice, and occurs only in special and specific conditions. The Tour Director, naturalists, and even the waiters at breakfast, have all said they have never seen conditions like this in the time they have been coming here. We are being treated to something very special.

We are chasing, and finding, humpback whales. They are contrasted against the icy sea and it is amazing. Sonar shows possible indications of krill, so where there is a concentration of krill there could be whales feeding on it. These whales appeared to be resting at first, but longer times between surfacing could indicate feeding. Fascinating!

The ship has its own photographer and videographer, and they could be seen in the cold and snow on the bow of the ship taking photos of the whales for a souvenir DVD that we can buy at the end of the cruise.

In the afternoon we dropped anchor at Cierva Cove, lying 11km SE of Cape Sterneck in Hughes Bay. It is a protected cove, with a glacier falling into it in the middle. The water was like glass, with myriads of broken chunks of glacier, of all sizes, throughout – like whipped egg white sitting on the surface. Some leopard seals were having siesta on small flat icebergs (leopard seals are predators and eat penguins and fish). Our group was the second to go out this time, so we were able to watch the others in the zodiacs explore from the water (this was not a landing excursion).

The water temperature here was -0.2° and the depth 400m; the air temperature 4.0°; the glacier 2.5km long; and the mountains 2000m high. Nearby are the red buildings of the Argentine station of Primavera – 64°8’ 35.5 S and 60°55’ 31.3W. Couldn’t see the Argentine flag flying, however.

We spent about 45 minutes cruising around in the crushed ice, marvelling at the shapes and colour of the icebergs, and learning why some ice is white (full of air bubbles, like the ice in our freezers) and other ice looks black (but is actually clear and devoid of air bubbles). The blue colour in icebergs occurs because frozen water absorbs the blue part of the colour spectrum. The blue stripes in icebergs occurs when water fills cracks and freezes – it is solid ice. Icebergs have three times as much below the water as above, so one that is about 40m high has 120m below the water. One such berg had a large crack in it so we didn’t go anywhere near it – eventually that will calve off and crash into the water.

this iceberg is about 40m high

leopard seal yawning

clear ice, looking black

zodiac appears level with base of iceberg but is actually not near it

a bit of sun catching a distant mountain

Earlier we said the water was like glass – that is how it appeared from the ship. However, in reality it was heaving with a swell and strong undercurrent, so the scenery changed constantly.

We learned that mariners can tell if there is land here when they see cloud. If there is a bright white line under the cloud then there is land (the white being a reflection from the snow). We saw this.

Tonight we watched another dance show, with clever use of lighting.