At sea en route to South Georgia
Long sea voyages always hold surprises, which is what makes them so alluring to the adventurer. Some days whales suddenly appear, and other days fleets of dolphins or albatross. And some days icebergs!
Just after six this morning the cry went up – iceberg ahead. People spilled out onto the chilly deck to view this unlikely monster, drifting slowly to its doom in warmer waters to the north. With over 650 miles to go, we were a bit surprised to see a berg almost halfway between Tristan da Cunha and South Georgia. And although we fully expect to see lots of ice at South Georgia, we know that this berg did not originate there, but rather far, far to the south. Antarctica’s vast, floating ice shelves regularly spawn huge icebergs, some measuring in the hundreds of square miles. As these flat-topped behemoths drift away from the continent they slowly break apart. Wave action erodes their sides and ultimately they roll completely over. This iceberg has obviously rolled a number of times, as indicated by its smooth sides and the nearly vertical orientation of the striations visible in this photo. These striations are actually layers of annual snowfall, and were of course originally horizontally oriented. In recent years significant portions of the Larsen Ice Shelf, on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, have broken away, and today’s berg could well have originated there. Caught in the Weddell Sea clockwise gyre, it would have then drifted northeast past the South Orkney Islands, past South Georgia and on into the Atlantic. We anticipate seeing several more icebergs in the coming days, as they often become grounded in the relatively shallow water around South Georgia.
Long sea voyages always hold surprises, which is what makes them so alluring to the adventurer. Some days whales suddenly appear, and other days fleets of dolphins or albatross. And some days icebergs!
Just after six this morning the cry went up – iceberg ahead. People spilled out onto the chilly deck to view this unlikely monster, drifting slowly to its doom in warmer waters to the north. With over 650 miles to go, we were a bit surprised to see a berg almost halfway between Tristan da Cunha and South Georgia. And although we fully expect to see lots of ice at South Georgia, we know that this berg did not originate there, but rather far, far to the south. Antarctica’s vast, floating ice shelves regularly spawn huge icebergs, some measuring in the hundreds of square miles. As these flat-topped behemoths drift away from the continent they slowly break apart. Wave action erodes their sides and ultimately they roll completely over. This iceberg has obviously rolled a number of times, as indicated by its smooth sides and the nearly vertical orientation of the striations visible in this photo. These striations are actually layers of annual snowfall, and were of course originally horizontally oriented. In recent years significant portions of the Larsen Ice Shelf, on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, have broken away, and today’s berg could well have originated there. Caught in the Weddell Sea clockwise gyre, it would have then drifted northeast past the South Orkney Islands, past South Georgia and on into the Atlantic. We anticipate seeing several more icebergs in the coming days, as they often become grounded in the relatively shallow water around South Georgia.
