Today we were woken up by an announcement by the captain
that there were humpback whales on the port side—aka RIGHT outside our window!
It was impossible to get a picture of the two young males breaching, but it was
amazing to see so up close and from the comfort of my own bed! It almost
reminded me of when I woke up to an elephant next to my bed in Tanzania. The
whales stayed there for about 45 minutes, and it was definitely a good way to
start the morning.
In the late morning, I attended a lecture on climate change,
which was interesting but incredibly scientific and long. I did learn that
during the winter ice in central Antarctica has been increasing, however, which
many scientists fail to mention. Also, for whatever reason we are also seeing
more ice around Antarctica. Apparently, the oceans aren’t as warm here as they
are in the Arctic, which could be why the warming process is so slow down here,
contrary to popular belief.
Later in the afternoon, we began sailing through a large
body of water with a ton of ice. I looked out our cabin window and all I saw
was ice like this for miles!
Surprisingly, we were able to take the zodiacs out in all
that ice. On the larger ice shelves, we looked for seals and we saw quite a
few!
We also found great beauty in icebergs. Below is my favorite
of the day!!!
As we were making our way back to the boat, our zodiac driver
Lollie said “and now a surprise!” From far away, it looked like a zodiac broke
down because two zodiacs were hooked together and one of them only had two
people. When we got closer, however, our driver hooked our zodiac onto the
other two and we saw crew members serving us hot chocolate!
It was a great
surprise and we all enjoyed some hot chocolate in the middle of
Antarctica! (Never thought I would say
that!!!!) When we were very close to the boat, we spotted a piece of ice that
almost looked crystalized. You’re probably thinking, “Ice? What’s so special
about that? Antarctica is FULL of that!” Well, this ice was special. We learned
that it was probably thousands of years old and if you took a drill and
analyzed the air bubbles, you would see what the atmosphere was like when the
air bubbles were first trapped in the ice.
What a fun day!!!
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