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WEEK 2: JANUARY 6, 2008 - JANUARY 12, 2008
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January 8, 2008
In the air over Vega Island, in the heart of the Weddell Sea
The sky is dark and cloud-filled when we lift off from King George Island in a Chilean Air Force Twin Otter, headed for the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. We had struck a deal over Sunday morning tea with the commander of the Chilean base for a three-hour round trip flight over the Weddell Sea, a key element in our decision on where to head by sailboat and kayak.
I've been studying satellite images of the Peninsula for the past several months. What I had learned was that this past winter had been a particularly cold one, even by Antarctic standards, and that the continent was ringed by even more ice than usual, which I verified each morning from my desk in New York during November and December when I checked out www.polarview.aq.
 Since arriving down south I've been talking with other boats as we pass, wondering if they'd yet been into the Weddell and if so, what had they discovered. So far no one had ventured as far south as we hoped to go. My interest specifically was in just how much pack ice still surrounds Vega and James Ross islands, the two we hope to explore and possibly circumnavigate. This morning's flight would be the most certain look anyone would have this season of exactly how much ice is still lingering in the bays of the Weddell Sea.
The long-lasting ice this season is difficult for people to understand when they've been hearing for many years how the ice and glaciers around the Antarctic Peninsula are thinning, melting and disappearing. The explanation is straightforward: While the seas around the Peninsula continue to warm each year and the ice and glaciers that surround it have diminished greatly in the past decade, the temperatures this past winter were colder and lasted longer than since 1995. But the cold season is an issue of seasonal weather, not the overall changes in climate that continue to impact the Antarctic Peninsula.
Our access to the Weddell Sea would be through the Antarctic Sound, a narrow channel between the continent and northern islands. As we flew over it we were surprised by how little ice was in the channel. I exchanged glances with Skip Novak, captain of the "Pelagic Australis," who'd been into the Weddell before. Though there were many big icebergs drifting north out of the channel, the overall lack of pack ice seemed like a good sign.
But as soon as we got to the backside of Vega Island, that optimism was dashed. Extremely thick pack ice, some of it more than a year old, chocked the waters between it and James Ross Island, blocking any route between them. Without question that much ice means there would be no safe harbor for our sailboat or kayaks. Skip had been here with his boat as recently as 2004; I have aerial photographs taken by another scouting party in 2005. In those years, the waters surrounding these islands were completely clear of ice. This year, it is very likely this ice won't move out at all, potentially making these routes unavigable next year as well. Not even a major windstorm will clear these channels in time for us to paddle through them. Though we can't speak to each other over the roar of the Twin Otter's propellers, it is immediately clear that the route we'd been planning for more than a year would be impossible to even attempt.
While disappointed, the ice conditions below remind me that you can't count on anything in Antarctica, because it is constantly evolving. Each day is different down south. As we circled the islands for another look, Skip and I spread the maps out on the floorboard between us and from 2,000 feet above the ice begin looking at our alternatives.
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SHELF ICE
In 1991 Will Steger's international team of explorers spent weeks crossing the Larsen ice shelf on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The team's photographs from the Larsen show a flat plain of snow-covered ice extending to the horizon, similar to images from the salt flats. You would guess, looking at the photographs, the team members, their sleds and dogs were standing on solid ground. Below their feet, however, was approximately 720 feet (220 meters) of ice floating on top of the ocean.
How do shelves of ice form? As you might imagine, it's a long process. First a cold spring season allows fast ice, a layer of sea ice that is frozen fast to the shore, to remain in place through the next year. Fast ice that survives more than one year is called bay ice. Bay ice that stays in place for many years is called shelf ice. Shelf ice gets thicker not only from freezing seawater, but also from snow and from glaciers moving towards the coasts. Ice shelves can be up to 1000 ft (300m) thick. That's almost a fifth of a mile thick.
 While crossing the Larsen, the ice shelf felt very stable to Steger and his team. Scientists at Queen's University estimate the shelf could have been stable for as long as 12,000 years - that many years ago there were still mastodons, mammoths, and saber-toothed cats roaming the earth. Over the course of three days in 2002, however, a chunk of ice the size of the New England state of Rhode Island broke free from the Larsen B ice shelf. The speed of the collapse surprised even the scientists who were monitoring the shelf. Scientists link the collapse with global climate change.
- Elizabeth K. Andre
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January 9, 2008 Enterprise Island
We took our first paddle strokes today, circumnavigating Enterprise Island about 150 miles down the western edge of the Peninsula. We will return to the Weddell Sea before the end of the trip to check ice conditions there and will spend the next two weeks nudging our way down the elegant, glacier-and-iceberg heavy coastline.
It felt great to be in our dry suits, off the "Pelagic" and snugged up in the big Necky kayaks. The sea was calm, almost glassy as we pulled around the first corner to find the channel leading out to the Gerlache Strait chocked with icebergs. Graham has been in this vicinity previously, passing through during his 500-mile paddle along the western side of the peninsula in 2000, and remembers the best spots along the coastline to explore. While we paddle we talk about how Antarctica is one place on the planet where it is impossible to feel jaded; even if you've seen a stretch of the Peninsula 20 times, each time it is different due to changes in the ice, the sky, the sea.
 We paddle through a bit of brash ice, our 22-foot long kayaks making a thudding sound as they roll over the small chunks of floating ice, and skirt cold sea spilling over the contour of the coastline. In the heart of the channel are big, spectacularly blue icebergs momentarily grounded. "There are usually more bergs," Graham shouts from the back of the kayak, "but it's apparently been windy in the past week and blown everything out to sea." While the sky above is clear and windless, along the far horizon it is dark and foreboding - a snowstorm in the distance.
The rounding takes nearly five hours and we finish next to the wreck of the "Guvernoren" in Wilhelmina Bay. A turn-of-the-century, 5,500-ton floating whale factory, only the rusted bow of the ship now points out of the calm sea. In 1913 the Norwegian ship was considered the most sophisticated whaling boat working in Antarctica, producing more than 22,600 barrels of oil and 2,500 sacks of guano taken from more than 550 whales. But on January 27, 1915, sitting here in this harbor stacked with more than 16,000 barrels of oil, its crew had a going away party, which unfortunately resulted in a massive fire. The boat was a total loss, though all 85 crewmen survived. As we float our kayaks over its sunken deck, its rusting side rails angling down through the clear sea, it's an eerie reminder of how fragile, how risky any kind of business in Antarctica must inevitably be. |
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January 10, 2008
LAMAIRE CHANNEL Each of these Oceans 8 trips has had a highlight...
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This is Rodrigo reporting in from the Pelagic...
PLAY AUDIO
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WHAT IS IT ABOUT KRILL?
 It's like something out of a science-fiction horror movie: creatures that feed on slime coating the underside of sea ice, and swimming in swarms of as many as 35,000 per square meter, advancing in a narrow band or sheet. They eat by gathering food between their legs and stuffing it in a sort of sausage casing while they digest it. If they run low on food, adults can "develop in reverse", losing their sex organs and regressing through previous life stages to a more immature life form that can absorb nutrients directly from the water.
These creatures may seem like science fiction, but they exist; they are krill, crustaceans that somewhat resemble shrimp. Krill are the primary food for Antarctic fish, squids, penguins, albatrosses, petrels, whales, and some seals. Penguins eat so much krill that their droppings are stained bright red by the krill's red pigments. Blue whales can eat up to 5 tons (4,500 kg) of krill in one day. One of the largest species of krill in the world weighs just over 1 gram as an adult, so that means one blue whale can eat about 4.5 million individual krill a day - that is more than the human populations of Philadelphia, Phoenix and San Antonio combined! Baleen whales eat so much krill they can increase their body weight by 50% during the summer months they spend feeding in Antarctic waters.
Because virtually all of the animals in Antarctica rely either directly or indirectly on krill, krill are called a keystone species. In construction, a keystone is the stone at the summit of an arch that locks the whole structure together. Without the keystone, the arch would fall. The same idea holds true for the krill as a keystone species; without krill the entire Antarctic ecosystem would collapse. - Elizabeth K. Andre |
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January 12, 2008 Vernadsky Station
Paddling through the Lemaire Channel the other day was something I had been dreaming of since the first time I saw it a decade ago. Then I was aboard the 300-foot-long National Geographic Endeavor; traveling through the dramatic channel in a 22-foot-long kayak was a much more intimate experience.
As we paddled Rodrigo asked me, Why kayaks? He is a mountaineer, one of Chile's best known, and has climbed K2 and Mount Everest. He has pulled sleds through mountain ranges in the heart of the Antarctic continent. But he's spent relatively little time traveling at sea level, just inches above the sea. I assure him it is more than the old climber's philosophy when asked why they climb
("Because it's there!").
 "In part for the adventure, absolutely. But mostly because of the proximity to the wilderness the boats allow us. Like right now. We're separated from the 30 degree Southern Ocean by just fractions of an inch of boat. There is no sound other than the drip of water off the end of the paddle blade and your own breathing. We can come up, as we did earlier this morning, on a leopard seal asleep on a floating piece of ice and he's unperturbed because we've approached so silently. In a way he sees us as a peer, rather than a predator. We can nose into tiny little crevices in the shoreline unreachable even by Zodiac, pull them up on the tiniest slice of rocky beach if we want to have a look around onshore."
My Chilean friend understands, and agrees. I have known him for seventeen years, and his family too. Whenever I pass through Santiago, which seems to be often, I stay at his house. We have climbed together in Bolivia and met in various big cities across the Americas. But this is the biggest adventure we've yet shared. Every morning he puts his arm around my shoulder, whether we are standing on the back deck of the "Pelagic Australis" or onshore, and smiles. "Isn't this great Juan! Isn't this unbelievable! Look at this - all around us - How could we be any more lucky!"
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