Today, I saw the Antarctic mainland for the first time! After awaking
ridiculously early for the first proper CTD, I headed up to the
bridge to see what Antarctica had to offer, and boy was it worth it!
The sun was almost visible, there were some small patches of blue
cloud, sea-ice was sporadically all around us, and the Antarctic
coast was in the distance, just visible through the cloud, and
everything just seemed to have a golden hue to it. AWESOME! The
perfect opportunity to test out the GoPro for a second time.
The day was spent in the Mertz region, on ocean previously never been
shipped in, or sampled by anyone, EVER! The waters we are currently
sailing used to be the home of the Mertz Glacier tongue for probably
thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, until it was bashed off
by a massive iceberg a few years back, leaving open water for us to
sample in. If you recall from last year, we were supposed to be
sampling here then, but thick sea-ice prevented our passing.
Fortunately, this sea-ice has since gone, and we were allowed to make
history! I'm also told this was the most southerly we will go, 67
00.13 south.
As the day progressed, the visibility got better and better, leaving
behind spectacular views of the Mertz Glacier. The glacier front was
still 7 nautical miles away, so it appeared fairly subdued, but just
the sheer scale of the thing was awe-inspiring - extending probably
tens-hundreds kilometers (so hard to tell scale here) up the coast in
either direction before merging in with other coast line. It just
made such a change from last year when fog hampered our aspirations
of viewing the Mertz.
Today was definitely the highlight of the trip so far. I think it
will be hard to be beat the tranquility of sitting in the (almost)
sun, the Mertz practically spanning as far as you could see, huge
icebergs in the distance, sea-ice basically close enough to touch,
penguins hopping by the ship to say hello and honking from ice floes,
snow petrels flying by, and views of the Antarctic coast. Hopefully a
day I will never forget. I wonder what treats Antarctica has in store
next.
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