Ari in Antarctica

It’s ice. It’s always ice. We’re currently avoiding a big storm right off the coast of the peninsula, staying tucked away around the island of Adelaide until the storm passes and we can enter into Marguerite Bay. Usually when a ship is headed to Marguerite Bay, they would sail on the outside of these protected waters, avoiding the tight passages and ice that can completely fill up this part of the Peninsula. Due to the storm, we chose to steam our way through the ice, and around all of the snow covered mountainous islands. This change of plan happened to bring us even closer to the wildlife of the seventh continent, passing by crabeater, leopard, and fur seals. Watching Minke and Humpback whales surface only dozens of feet from our bow. And noticing a few lone Adelaide penguins floating on large icebergs, safely out of reach of any of the predators swimming nearby. While the leisure/tourist parts of this cruise have been amazing, giving us indesc...

It’s a marvel how quickly the weather changes down here. Yesterday we had a perfect cotton candy skied sunrise and calm little swells brushing up against the ship, it felt nothing short of a winter paradise. And if I’d imagined the distant white shoreline being covered in sand rather than caked in a thick layer of snow I could have made myself believe I were back in the Gulf of Mexico. Today is another story entirely; with 40 knot winds, ten+ foot swells, floating ice of varying sizes beating against the hull of the ship, and a constant swirl of big fluffy snowflakes. Today I’m reminded why the tagline for this gorgeous place is; “it’s a harsh continent.” Currently we’re steaming back to Palmer Station to pick up some replacement equipment we couldn’t find or repair on board for our CTD/Rosette. This will put us maybe a day or two behind our sampling schedule, not accounting for the weather.  Luckily, we began the morning sampli...

We made it to Palmer Station! Although we were only at dock for about twenty-four hours, it gave us enough time to explore the station itself and see how bad our “dock rock” was at this point in the trip.   At the tail end of our cruise we’re predicted to spend four or five full days at Palmer Station, which will give us time to hike the glacier, explore the backyard, and even relax in the hot tub or sauna. Our ship is the last expedition to Palmer Station until October, so any staff or scientists that are not staying at Palmer until October (which is called “wintering over”) will board the LMG and head back to Punta Arenas with us at the end of May. Until then, we’re doing around a month (or thirty days give or take) of sailing all the way down the Antarctic Peninsula, crossing the Antarctic circle into Marguerite Bay, then back up the peninsula sampling and performing our experiments along the way.   My team predicts we’ll ...