Day 12 - Missed opportunities as we are forced to head further south

29 January 2014

I was extremely disappointed to find that we had skipped our next destinations overnight as the easterly winds had made landing difficult at all the sites along the West coast of the Ross Sea. Im a little gutted as opportunities disappear as we travel past landing sites giving us only one shot at these spots on the way home. I want like anything to land somewhere on Antarctica as soon as we can.

On our 200km trip south, deep into the Ross sea there wasn’t much to see as cloud blocked the view from the coast. We travelled past Franklin Island home to a huge Adelie Penguin Colony and then past a large tabular 9 mile long iceberg along with our first green iceberg. I was astonished to hear that there was an iceberg in 2000 called B15 that was 295km by 37km the size of a small country. I learnt that the large icebergs have a grading system A to D and are tracked being given one of the 4 letters depending on where they originate. When B15 broke up B15A drifted away from Ross Island and headed north in 2003 and it was only in 2005 that these bits broke up even further.

The sea has distinctly turned green as part of the summer transformation of algae resulting in the nutrient rich waters which all forms of live thrive on in the summer months.

Franklin Island

This iecberg may look small on screen and in the picture but it was 9 miles long.

A green iceberg

Large tabular iceberg with broken off bergie bits following behind

I was up at 2am in the morning as I couldnt sleep and just as we were approaching a snow storm I saw this ship past by. It was a fuel supply ship that had just left Mcmurdo Station.