• Remote Weddell Sea Explorer
    Cruising along the Ekström Ice Shelf — Neuschwabenland, Antarctica.
    Cruising along the Ekström Ice Shelf — Neuschwabenland, Antarctica.You can see where a crack has formed for a possible calving fairly soon ... Ekström Ice Shelf.Cruising along the Ekström Ice Shelf — Neuschwabenland, Antarctica.What's that little black dot on the iceberg? Why it's our first emperor penguin of the expedition.Cruising along the Ekström Ice Shelf — Neuschwabenland, Antarctica.Cruising along the Ekström Ice Shelf — Neuschwabenland, Antarctica.Cruising along the Ekström Ice Shelf — Neuschwabenland, Antarctica.4Hot chocolate laced with rum to ward off the chill as we cruise along the Ekström Ice Shelf.Nope ... not the end of the ice shelf ... it continues along the coast.

    RWSE Day 12: Yes … We’re @ the Continent

    February 22, Southern Ocean ⋅ ☀️ 12 °F

    When Tennessee’s voice came over the P/A to announce “Land Ahoy,” perhaps he should have said “Ice Ahoy!”

    Not that he was wrong, mind you. There was land ahead. It was just behind one of the many ice shelves that rim Antarctica … impenetrable walls of ice … floating extensions of land ice (glaciers and ice sheets) that remain attached to the continent even as they float out over the ocean. If I recall correctly, we’d have to travel 45 NM through the ice shelf ahead of us to actually stand on land ice.

    And that’s the answer to the cliffhanger!

    What we spied on the horizon was the Antarctic Continent’s Neuschwabenland. More accurately, given the above explanation, the Ekström Ice Shelf of Neuschwabenland.

    First mapped by the Norwegian-British-Swedish Expedition of 1949-1952, the Ekström Ice Shelf covers an area about 3,400 square miles (8,700 square kilometers) … with a thickness of 520 feet (160m) at the edge … and only 50 feet (15m) of it visible above the ocean’s surface. Sounds huge doesn’t it? Well, let me disabuse you of that thought. Compared to some of the other Antarctic ice shelves, this one’s a baby! A ginormous baby to be sure!

    For the curious, the biggest ice shelf on the continent is the one we visited on an expedition in 2015 … the Ross Ice Shelf at 182,610 square miles [472,960 square kilometers]. If all goes well, and Mother Nature permits it, we hope to get to the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf later in this expedition. That one is just a little smaller than the Ross Ice Shelf.    Read more