Useful Island, Dallmann Bay
There is water on this planet with no life in it, but nowhere on the planet is there life without water. Here in Antarctica we are surrounded by water. The seas we sail in, the icebergs we cruise by, the clouds we are living under. Water here in almost unfathomable amounts represented in all of its various forms; solid, liquid, and vapor.
Porpoising penguins please us, whales are wondrous to watch, but it is the frozen water that truly captures our hearts and imaginations. Pre-dawn red and gold reflected in the ocean’s surface greeted us this morning on board the National Geographic Explorer as she worked her way past huge icebergs and into the Lemaire Channel from the south.
While some hiked on land, our morning Zodiac tours at Useful Island provided up-close and personal views of the many ways wind and sea can contort and shape ice to form magical and almost mythical sculptures. Arches, caves, spires, icicles, benches, rills, dimples, cracks, holes and patterns all unfold upon closer inspection. The sounds of the ice as it gurgles, pops, buckles, clinks, growls, and grinds complete the experience.
After a visit by type “B” killer whales to the ship just after lunch we worked our way into Dallmann Bay and even more versions of ice. Here the ship’s hull cleaved through first year sea ice as well as bergy bits and growlers interspersed between large icebergs. The ice parted for us to pass, but a look astern confirmed what I already knew; the ice quickly closed in behind us and masked all traces that we had passed this way at all.
Make no mistake about it dear reader, for so many of us the wildlife of Antarctica is the initial draw to visit this wonderful place, but it is the whimsical, magical, ethereal beauty of all the forms of water that we will remember long into our collective futures.
