Falling ice!!!!

Man, what a day!!!
Short recap because I'm presenting tonight to everyone at the nightly debrief and doing a video interview with the National Geographic videographer.

TODAY WAS EPIC!  I know I may have said that before, but it was.  We went out by zodiac into Cierva Cove, the site of an actively calving glacier with glaciologist Dr. Erin Pettit.  Cierva Cove is the site of amazing icebergs and lots of brash ice.  The glaciers face was about 80m tall.  Dr. Pettit was attempting to determine the salinity and the temperature of the cove.   Even cooler than that though she listening to the glacier.  I'm serious.  She had a probe called a hydrophone with some sort of microphone on it lowered down into the cove and was recording the sound of the water melting.  Glaciers have gasses bound in them, and when they melt underwater like that, they make a popping sound.  By doing this she could determine the rate it was melting and other variables associated with how it was changing.  We assisted her doing this stuff, which was wicked cool.  I used a range finder to see how far we were from the glacier, Donnie was collecting way points and helping with the hydrophone, and Dan was recording the data she was collecting. She really wanted to pick up the sound of the glacier calving while we were out there, but she didn't really get much in that regard. BUT SHS DID!!!  None of us in the zodiac could believe that when I was on the phone with you, the glacier let go of a huge amount of ice from high up on the face, and created a huge wave as the ice hit the water.  Totally amazing!!    After that we did some seine netting, but didn't get anything.  We were hoping for krill but it didn't happen.  We were surprised because several whales were spotted by the ships whale biologist Dr. Connor Ryan earlier in the morning.  Getting out of the brash ice was interesting - it had closed all around us and chunks got stuck under the zodiac

We're going to head out and explore a few little islands here in a minute.  From where we sit, there's a bunch of what look like elephant seals sitting on the snow.  About 10 feet from them, near the edge of the island there is what looks like a lot of blood streaked over the snow.  Its hard to tell what exactly happened there, but its easy to infer.  Antarctica is a wild and unforgiving place.

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 13, 2018 at 10:31 AM

    Incredible! Thanks for pictures you've shared with your camera and your words. Your blog makes it feel like we are there with you! Beautiful! Life changing! It couldn't have happened to a better person!

    Steph

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mr KaputDecember 13, 2018 at 2:10 PM

      Awww shucks. From a super teacher like you, that means a ton. It is beautiful, and life changing.

      Delete
  2. suckerDecember 13, 2018 at 3:03 PM

    Just.....wow!
    And again, I don't know why my 'name ' is sucker. It must have been one of the boys.

    ReplyDelete

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