Tabular Heaven, Day 3

December 13, 2009

by

  Post A Comment

Every place along the Antarctic Peninsula tends to be my favorite. Bailey Head. Neko Harbor. Paradise Bay. Cuverville. The Lemaire Channel. The Grand Didier Channel. Crystal Sound. The Fish Island Group. Marguerite Bay. And on and on and on.

Tabular Ice, Weddell Sea, Antarctica 2009

But in Antarctica places can tend to run together thanks to one commonality: Here it is truly all about just one thing, The Ice. Sure, we all know there’s rock and snow below (even petrified forests and most likely dinosaur bones). But for the moment still, I still come to the far south each austral summer for the ice.

I admit to having a favorite: The big, tabular icebergs that litter the Weddell Sea like giant white dominoes. Set free from their role as guardian of the coastline gives them an independence apparent in their grandness. Frozen sea built up over centuries of falling snow, these particular tabulars are broken off from, remnants of the Larsen Ice Shelf. They are drifting (very slowly) north through the Antarctic Sound, where they will eventually float (very slowly)from the Southern Ocean into the Atlantic where they will, in a decade or so?, melt.

Today they are significant for more than just their size. These were once the grand guardians of the glaciers lining the eastern side of the Peninsula. That they have broken off and drifted away means those glaciers are at risk of disappearing ever faster.

They are long (on average a mile, sometimes up to ten and twelve miles) and high (one hundred and fifty, two hundred feet) and barely on the move. At the moment most are grounded and lodged on the ocean floor, shearing it clean of all living things. Their role in Antarctica’s future is powerful. Free to roam, and to disappear with the assistance of wind, rain, and warming temperatures, they’ve given up their role as protectorate and taken on the role of floating idols, reflecting sky and sea in new patterns every single minute.

Remembering Antarctica’s Worst Accident

November 29, 2009

by

  1 Comment

With the Antarctic tourist season begun – more than 40,000 will visit the seventh continent during the upcoming austral summer – yesterday’s memorial of the thirtieth anniversary of the worst accident ever on the continent was evermore relevant. AFP reports on the visit of relatives of the accident to the site of the accident. For obvious reasons, flyover tourism of Antarctica was stopped after the 1979 accident, resumed only again last year:

Six relatives of 257 people killed during an Air New Zealand sightseeing flight to Antarctica 30 years ago returned to the crash site Friday to mark the anniversary. The airline arranged for the relatives to be flown to McMurdo Sound in Antarctica on a U.S. Air Force flight.

Helicopters then flew the family members to the crash site on Mt. Erebus, although plans to land had to be postponed because of bad weather, Television New Zealand reported. “There are no words for this, it is incredibly beautiful,” said Pip Collins, daughter of Jim Collins, the captain of the DC10 aircraft which crashed into the mountain on November 28, 1979

Eric Houghton, the son of one of the victims, said: “I’ve been here probably hundreds of times in my mind but nothing prepares you for the vastness, emptiness and beauty of the place.” Memorial services will be held at New Zealand’s Antarctic center at Scott Base, as well as Auckland and Christchurch, on Saturday.

Air New Zealand apologized last month for its treatment of families of the crash victims, saying they had not received the support and compassion they deserved

The worst air disaster in New Zealand history was mired in controversy after a judicial inquiry overturned an earlier finding of pilot error, and blamed the airline for incorrectly programming the aircraft’s navigational computers.