Five days after it ran aground off the Antarctic Peninsula, the tourist ship M/V Ushuaia was pulled off the rocks this morning, by tugboat. Damage to the ship is still being assessed. The ship will stay in the area, in a protected bay along the Peninsula, until it is decided whether it is able to return to Argentina under its own power, if it is in good enough condition to be towed, or if it may need to be repaired here in Antarctica before sailing. What is still not known is how much fuel oil or lubricant was spilled at the site of the grounding.
This small cove at the end of a long, glacier-packed bay off the Gerlache Strait is one my favorite corners along the Peninsula. It is surrounded by tall peaks – including, on a brilliant day like today, the tallest along the Peninsula, 9,200-foot-tall Mt. Francais – and long glacier tongues leading to the sea. Standing onshore of continental Antarctica, rather than one of the thousands of frozen islands that dot the sea along the Peninsula, I study the far wall as small but powerful avalanches launch from up high. The bay is lined by a two-mile-long glacier which, if it broke off a big chunk, would send eight foot waves surging across the beach where I stand; if that happened, I’d have to run fast uphill to where the penguins, wisely, make their nests.
Neko Harbor
I’ve been to Antarctica a dozen times over the past twenty years. Sometimes it is possible to get inured, occasionally blasé, about the incredible beauty that surrounds. I try to remind myself as often as possible to take a half hour each day and just sit and revel in the grandeur of the place. Words don’t suffice in detailing Antarctica’s physical beauty. The most powerful memories I collect here are not even visual, but aural.
You often hear Antarctica before you see it. For example, the splash of feeding penguins porpoising out of the sea, sometimes in pairs, sometimes by the hundreds. The blow of a humpback whale long before you catch sight of its arching back. The thunder crack of powerful movement from deep inside a glacier; there’s nothing to see on the surface, no visual change, just the loud report of the giant ice’s continual evolution. Today, most powerfully, I listened the ice moving fast through the channel in front of me: Brash ice, glacial chunks, sizable icebergs, groaning and cracking as they headed out of the channel towards faster-moving waters.
Other highlights:
• On a rocky, north-facing slope we spied something today that is very new to Antarctica: Grass. About twenty feet off the sea, two small patches of just-greening herb, more evidence that the Peninsula is warming.
• On another tall cliff, streaks of blue-green malakite, a rich mineral vein, a reminder of just how much mineral wealth lies beneath all this ice. As the ice continues to lessen, one of the biggest changes in Antarctica will be nations fighting over who owns what. Copper, diamonds, oil … all will become new Antarctic commodities if warming trends continue.
• I watched a playful crabeater seal play along the light-blue edge of a floating iceberg. They are one of the more curious and playful of Antarctica’s seals and, though we don’t see them everyday here, the most numerous big animal on the planet after man, some 30 million.
• Update on the M/V Ushuaia: Nothing solid, just small radio chatter. A tugboat is on the way – perhaps has already arrived – to assess the possibility of pulling the ship off the rocks. Concerns are obvious: It’s got a hole in it. Dragging it off the rocks could worsen the gash. And once off the rocks, there’s no guarantee it will be able to self-navigate back to Argentina or even be able to be towed.
I spent the morning among the Yalour Islands, near the northern end of the Grand Didier Channel, zipping by Zodiac around icebergs of a variety of shapes and sizes. Initially the skies were bright and blue, the first such we’ve seen in a few days. Actually, the last blue skies were accompanied by hurricane winds, which blew every cloud in the sky out of the way. But as is typical for Antarctica, things changed rapidly today as a fast-moving snow squall blotted the sun and turned the idyllic scene quickly more ominous, a whiteout, impossible to see the shoreline.
We passed through these islands eleven months ago by kayak and the difference today is dramatic. Because we were going to travel along the Peninsula by kayak last January, for many months I had started each morning checking out www.polarview.aq and its satellite images of Antarctica’s ice.
Each year more than seven millions square miles of sea ice freezes around the continent, twice the size of the U.S. That pack ice breaks up and melts in different patterns and stages each austral summer based on how warm the temperatures are, how big are the winds. Last year the continent was ringed by frozen sea ice until late in January, even the Peninsula, which is generally the first Antarctic region to lose its ice.
Look at the map I downloaded yesterday. By comparison to a year ago, there’s very little ice ringing the continent, especially considering it’s still officially springtime here.
The Peninsula is almost completely clear of ice. Last year we attempted to get into the Weddell Sea with kayaks and it was impossible, due to the thick pack ice. Every year is different down here, but this year the change in pack ice is dramatic.
A view of the continent's ice-pack, 12.5.08
- A view of the continent’s ice-pack, 12.5.08
M/V Ushuaia update: By now the 122 passengers and crew should have been picked up by air from King George Island, where they were transported by Chilean Naval ship yesterday. But the ship remains on the rocks at Wilhelmina Bay, about 50 miles north of where I am today. Apparently it is still leaking fuel oil — though they have attempted to constrain the leak, 20-25 mile an hour winds have spread it to half-a-mile around the ship. Divers are on their way to check out the damage, and some kind of tugboat is coming. Concern is that once the ship is maneuvered and/or pulled off the rocks, with a gash in its hull, it may not be sailable, could possibly sink … turning it into a new tourist attraction along the Peninsula, a reminder for future visitors.
One of the things I love most about Antarctica is that every day is different. And long. Even in these early days of the austral spring, it gets only dusk-like for a few hours in the early morning. Today we are east of Adelaide Island and will return back northwards in a day or two; for the next month we’ll be exploring the Peninsula before heading out to South Georgia and the Falkland Islands in January. Already during the past five days we’ve seen thick pack ice and big rolling seas, bright shiny sun and one very fierce storm – most of that day was spent fighting into a hurricane force gale wind, which topped one hundred miles per hour on occasion and averaged more than fifty miles per hour.
The one thing that seems, unfortunately, to be becoming a staple of each Antarctica summer is news that one tourist ship or another has gotten into trouble. Last year, we were the first on the scene to witness the sinking of the “Explorer” and rescue of its lifeboat-bound 154 passengers. Yesterday around noon we heard – almost simultaneously via radio, sat phone and email, proving once again that it is a small, small world – that the Argentinean ship “Ushuaia” had run aground near Wilhelmina Bay. Though we were only about thirty miles south of the accident at the time, it appeared there were other ships closer by to lend a hand and that a pair of Chilean Navy ships was on the way to offload its passengers.
While it appears that all 122 on board are safe and that the ship will not sink, there are big questions about the after-effects: It’s reported the hull was torn and that oil has already leaked into the pristine bay. Although containment booms were deployed, they are never one hundred percent efficient. In my years of traveling the world’s coastlines, one privilege of coming to Antarctica is that it is the one place on earth where you see virtually no evidence of man’s polluting. That will change if the increasing numbers of ships coming to Antarctica each year keep running onto the rocks, or worse.
During the next few days we’ll invariably learn more about the hows and whys of the “Ushuaia’s” accident. What I’m most interested in is what the treaty nations that govern the continent take away from this now seemingly inevitable annual wreckage. While I’m not sure exactly how to avoid future accidents — perhaps by putting even more limitations on who can come to Antarctica and by what means? — I believe somehow change has to be instigated. (During the 2007-2008 season a new record for visitors was set, over 46,000 by ship and airplane.)
Antarctica, December 4, 2008: The MV USHUAIA, has run aground.
links: NY Times news
NY Times: Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth
check back, I’ll be regularly posting images and reports from Antarctica until mid January 2009…
JB
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