RWSE Day 23: Colossal A76C

“The land looks like a fairytale.” ~~ Roald Amundsen … about Antarctica ~~ (from the Daily Program)

A76C … a seemingly unending wall of ice towering over everything around it; 98.76 square NM in area; 16x7 NM in length and width … so long that we couldn’t see where it started and where it ended; now grounded and going nowhere fast; the third largest calf of A76, which was born of the Ronne Ice Shelf near Berkner Island in 2021 as the largest tabular berg in the world … 89x13 NM in length and width.

We were sailing alongside A76C … in band after band of sea ice. That was the news we woke up to when EL Sara came on the P/A to make the announcement bright and early this morning.

That we were where we wanted to be was the exciting news. That there were seals on ice floes, humpback whales in the water, and Antarctic and snow petrels in the air was good news. That it was overcast with little contrast between the sky and the colossal tabular … well, that was the bad news. Heli ops to land on the giant iceberg were out of the question. “Too dangerous to fly,” was the verdict of the pilots … unless conditions magically improved.

They didn’t. So, the plans for the day’s program was re-written.

After a later-than-usual breakfast, Tennessee waded into the breach with part one of a lecture about his hero … “James Clark Ross: The Man, The Myth, The Legend. Tennessee’s quirky sense of humor was apparent from the start of the lecture as the title slide showed him superimposed on one of Ross’s famous portraits … in a fancy uniform, swaddled in furs, and holding a sword. He touched on Ross’s eight polar expeditions … in the north and the south … including the final search in 1848-1849 for Franklin’s lost expedition in the Arctic.

Tennessee’s lecture was followed by another helicopter demonstration workshop with Mario and a presentation by Bernd Konantz, one of the guests onboard, about his time over-wintering at Germany’s Neumayer II station as a meteorological officer. We skipped both.

What did we do instead? We spent time on deck … enjoying the ship’s cruise along A76C. The size of the tabular berg made it impossible to capture photos of its immensity, so I resorted to videos. But even they fell short of accurately depicting what we were seeing with our eyes.

As the sea ice became denser, I turned my attention to the floes moving on the currents. I kept my eyes peeled for critters that might be hiding behind hummocks on the floes. My patience was rewarded with sightings of leopard, fur, and crabeater seals … rising from their prone positions to check us out. There were also plenty of Antarctic and snow petrels flying around.

Then, amongst the bands of ice, whales appeared … humpbacks. I’m not sure exactly how many there were, but, on occasion, there were at least two dorsal fins visible at the same time. Every once in a while we could hear the sound of their puffs and their calls. They stayed with us for quite a while, but never fluked. My guess? They were feeding.

And on that note … time to feed ourselves. We will need energy to keep us warm this afternoon.Læs mere