With a nice early 2.30am wakeup I looked outside to see us cruising past Cape Crozier (home of a large emperor penguin colony at the right time of year) and the Ross Ice Shelf. What a sight.
A continuos wall of ice as far as the eye could see (400km long). We travelled 350m out parallel to the edge where the ice shelf was as high as the top deck 15m and raised to about 20m as we followed alongside. There were hundreds of penguins in the water and several minke whales that came to say hi. The size and scale of the shelf was beyond imagining especially when I think about the size and scale of iceberg B52 that broke off.
After the excitement of the morning and little sleep the last days I slept through the breakfast wakeup call and instead woke at lunch to us arriving at Franklin Island. The call was made not to land at the adelie penguin colony and instead we set course for the Drygalski Ice Tongue. I was disappointed as I felt we could have landed.
Further in the day I was on the bridge searching for whales when I noticed a little broken up ice on the horizon that got thicker an thicker as we approached the ice tongue and six crew were on deck trying to navigate through the ice. My heart was racing as this is what I had been looking forward to the entire trip. The westerly wind had broken the ice from Mcmurdo Sound which had been held by the easterly wind the last four days
The boat had to push through this high density ice and came across our first lot of pancake ice – really big lily pads which appear just before the ice freezes together solid.
I was great to be amongst all this and now having seen this I can start to understand how the boat got stuck wind wind pushing the sea ice together and trapping the boat. The captain and team leader did not want to take any risks so we headed back around for a long loop around to the other side of the ice tongue.
On route I spotted a couple of orcas which turned into five orcas the closer we got. They were spy hopping at the edge of the pack ice trying to find some seals for dinner. I have seen this on documentaries so it was very special to see this happening in real life. We followed the smaller pod for awhile and got a nice close up as they hunted through the pack. I spotted some penguins on one sheet of ice directly ahead of the orcas direction of travel however they killers either did not see them or did not want to spend time chasing the smaller animals.
ROSS ICE SHELF
FRANKLIN ISLAND
SOUTHERN END OF DRYGALSKI ICE TONGUE
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