McMurdo Sound and Erebus Bay

On Monday 23 February we were called at 6am. We had arrived at McMurdo Sound (the enlarged map here) and it was a gloriously sunny morning. We motored south along Cape Royds, past Inaccessible Island and Tent Island towards Cape Evans, through what is called 'pancake ice', which reminded me of Monet's lily pond for some reason. The top of Mount Erebus was shrouded in clouds, although later we saw it puffing away in all its volcanic glory.
We drove on through the channel cut into the fast ice (fast as in 'attached' not 'speedy') by an icebreaker earlier in the summer. We saw the occasional emperor penguin, skua, seal and brief glimpses of a pod of orca, feeding at the edge of the ice. We moved steadily ahead aiming at a solid edge of ice. And yes, we just drove into it...and stopped. The channel to Hut Point which is cut every year by a Norwegian icebreaker was frozen over. We could see a rubbly ice road ahead, but the rest of the way was blocked. Nothing unusual, apparently, because this route has been frozen every year for the past ten. One of our fellow passengers had taken this same tour ten years ago and 1999 was the last time they had been able to boat along to Hut Point. They backed the boat and then tied it sideways to the ice with big metal stakes, hammered into the ice by the crew.


Then they lowered the gangplank and we could walk on the ice. Breathtaking views, strange blue sky. This landscape is so very very wide. And I would say silent, because it looks silent, but the wind roars past you and you're so wrapped in warm woollies that you can't hear much except your own breathing. The temperature was -17° plus windchill, but the sun was shining!
It is impossible to capture this wide landscape on camera, with mountains in the far distance, stunning clouds and sky colour, which change over the course of the day. The only thing is to walk there, on your own, awestruck.



There were little groups of emperor penguins standing on the ice edge and plunging in, climbing out again and jumping in again, generally having a good time. Watching from the bridge, we felt that this idyllic scene could not last and was bound to attract the attention of predators. And sure enough [scary horror movie music], there came a pod of orca. There seemed to be a lot of them, maybe twenty or so (the biologist had never seen such a large pod of orca in McMurdo Sound). I felt like shouting a warning to the penguins, who seemed oblivious at first. But then a certain panic started to set in. The penguin diving and plunging stopped, but to my surprise there was no mass exodus from the water. The ice is probably a foot or so high, and we had already seen that it was not that easy for the penguins to get out of the water. Sometimes they would slide back and try again. This was not a risk they were willing to take now. They had a better plan. By diving under and around the little ice pieces our boat had loosened, the group of penguins managed to position itself behind the orca pod. Penguins are faster and can maneuver more easily than orca and therefore can stay behind the more sluggish whale. However, the orca are canny hunters and fairly quickly split into two groups and were able to herd and corner a few penguins against the edge of the ice at the end of the channel. I am sure I saw one penguin flying through the air as it was thrown up. I could not see everything, because (just as when I watch a scary movie) I closed my eyes at the critical moment. Strangely enough, the orca gave up after a short while and swam back out to sea, closely followed by the group of penguins, who did not dare go their own way until they were quite sure the orca were gone. We spotted one or two young orca (little fins beside the big one) and it is possible that this whole episode was more a hunting lesson for the young than an intended feeding frenzy. I have read somewhere that orca do teach their young in such a manner.

Symphony in black and white - and a little blue

Sunday 22 February 2009
After six days at sea I would have been happy to set foot on ANY piece of land and the bleak looking "small and rocky volcanic pile of Franklin Island" (as the online Brittanica calls it) was fine with me. This island is about 12 km long and lies a hundred or so kilometres from Ross Island, in the Ross Sea. New Zealand Land Information (LINZ) has quite a nice map of the Ross Sea area here. You can see an enlarged view by clicking on it. Franklin Island proved to be an amazing Antarctic experience. We had wonderful clear weather the rest of the time in the Ross Sea, but this day was overcast and dark, which made the island look stark and forbidding. The animals staying on it matched the colour scheme: grey Weddel seals, grey and brown skuas and black and white Adelie penguins. The other penguins we had seen so far all had some colour, either in their feathers or on their beak. But Adelies are just black and white. The island was totally covered in snow. On the shingle beach it was 30 to 60 cm deep, fresh and untouched, except for some penguin tracks and Weddell seal trails. The rest was covered in a huge ice cap. It was cold!!



The Adelies were either moulting adults or fledgelings. They were very comical when they moved around, either waddling through the snow, or to go faster they plopped down and 'swam'. Tragically, as our biologist told us, these fledgelings were born too late and because they have not yet managed to leave are unlikely to make it through winter. Their parents are not feeding them anymore, either because they have already left for the winter, or because they can't go in the water while they're moulting. These young ones went up to anything and anyone (including us tourists) to ask for food. But the adult penguins were not having a bean of it. It looks comic, but it's also a bit sad, really. I took a movie of a young one trying to cajole an adult into feeding it.



The next morning we arrived at McMurdo Sound. We were called at 6am, so we would not miss a thing. It was a glorious sunny morning. More next time.

Latitudes

We left Macquarie Island in the afternoon of 16 February. We spent the next six days at sea. It is an awful long way from Macquarie to the Ross Sea!! It gave me time to adjust to the boat's movements. I had to learn to swivel my chair with the rocking of the boat while eating dinner. Actually getting the food into my mouth was still a challenge. I also learned to have a shower while holding on tightly with one hand. Especially when trying to wash hair it was occasionally necessary to let go, at which point I would firmly plant my feet wide on the slip-free mat in the shower and do the best I could. Thank goodness for yoga, which I have practiced for years and which involves balancing exercises. Still, drying oneself and getting dressed was a feat. The latter I did in the safety of my cabin bunk. Even brushing teeth proved difficult.

During our wild journey south all lectures and films were cancelled, the hatches were battened and even our porthole was closed. Very claustrophobic. By the evening of Wednesday the sea calmed a bit. At the announcement of the first iceberg! we all rushed up the three flights of stairs to see this wonder from the bridge.


On Thursday morning (19 February) more icebergs and so-called 'bergy bits' appeared on a slick and oily looking sea. We were shown a movie about 100 years of Antarctic exploration. What struck me most was what the Americans did. After many struggles, and deaths, for decades of English, German, Norwegian, Belgian, Australian explorers to reach the pole or to explore the continent, the Americans suddenly burst onto the scene by flying an aeroplane over the pole and dropping a flag tied to a stone from the plane. See here for a brief piece about the pilot Richard E. Byrd and here for a longer piece about Byrd's polar exploits. This expedition did actually a lot more than just fly over the pole and was also engaged in other research and aerial surveying of Antarctica. The Germans also surveyed Antarctica from the air and claimed parts of the continent by dropping metal swastikas to mark the boundaries. Thanks to the Antarctic Treaty, which was first signed in 1959 and came into force in 1961, the continent is now agreed to be international and a place for peaceful research (and tourism). Here is a Wikipedia entry about the treaty and here that of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (or SCAR). Finally here is the official web page of the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat. We received a lecture about this all important treaty, in preparation for our induction into the Antarctic community when we crossed the Antarctic Circle at 60° latitude. This crossing calls for a ceremony, just as crossing the equator does. It was short (because of the cold) and solemn in so far as we had to swear to protect Antarctica and its wildlife. We then received 'the mark of the penguin' (a penguin stamp on our foreheads) and a much needed cup of warm mulled wine.



We started to see our first whales, in the distance, just a tail and a curved back of a humpback whale and as we approached the Antarctic Circle I saw whales spouting as well.

On Saturday 21 February we were woken at 5am: Cape Adare was in sight. Cape Adare is the first tip of solid land and part of the continent one encounters on the journey south. It is a peninsula which lies on the northeastern most point of Victoria Land, East Antarctica. The cape separates the Ross Sea to the east from the Southern Ocean to the west. Behind are the high Admiralty Mountains. Cape Adare was an important landing site and base camp during the earliest Antarctic exploration. On it stands a hut from the 1899 Antarctic Expedition. But alas! we could not get near it because there was too much ice in the harbour.

We motored alongside and then turned back to enter the Ross Sea. Unlike what I've read about the Antarctic Peninsula (to which one journeys from South America), we were here not surrounded by pack ice or icebergs. It all looked very distant and desolate and forbidding. When we went deeper into the Ross Sea the water became oily and thickened; you could see ice forming in blobs. In the distance a rocky coast with ice tongues flowing down. In the further distance a pink sunny spot lit up a white snowy mountain. The landscape is so wide and awe inspiring - nothing can represent it properly. The evening red was spectacular.




It was very cold indeed. Waves that hit the deck froze before they could flow away and spray that hit the front windows of the bridge instantly froze: SPLOT! The spray on the portholes was also frozen. There was even ice on the inside of our pothole.

By Sunday evening 22 February we were expected to arrive in McMurdo Sound. The journey was becoming a little tedious. I was aware of feeling just a tad frazzled. We had not been on land for six days now! The days were punctuated by meals (eating far too much of wonderful food), lectures, documentaries, films and times standing on the bridge, watching the sea, in between periods of lying on our bunks reading or sleeping. Then we got a surprise: we were going to land on Franklin Island. It did not sound promising: a shingle beach, not very large, but it proved an unexpected pleasure. More next time.