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| Mountain caught in daylight between high and low clouds. |
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| The strata of clouds appears quite odd. Is the bottom one more a layer of mist and if so, what's the difference? |
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| Raincloud emptying itself over the Ocean Endeavour. |
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| The ice here is mostly brash ice. The chunk of the right doesn't qualify as a growler in my estimation. |
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| The near ice on the left might though. |
Cierva Cove was almost our last stop before Deception Island, and with Deception Island being more closely associated with the South Shetlands, we were nearing the end of our time amongst the ice and the penguins. This isn't a time to be sad however as there was still plenty of adventure to come and I definitely still have some things to say about the subject. Those thoughts will have to spill over into some of the Argentine reels.
For the moment we were still very much surrounded by ice and so this seems a good time to talk a bit about language that has developed to describe it. Unlike in the northern hemisphere where there are long-established native populations with their own words for conditions in and around the Arctic Circle, the Antarctic was a blank canvas. However many ships which explored it also spent time exploring the Arctic, so between the whalers, sealers and navies of the world a broad system of classification developed.
At the top is the iceberg. You've seen plenty of photographs of them in this blog. These are the magnificent and endlessly differing lumps of ice which have calved from glaciers or broken off sea ice. They range in size from those seen here, which are big, especially considering 90% of one is hidden below the water. At the other end of the scale however they are mind-bogglingly huge. The most celebrated of these at the moment is iceberg A23a, which broke from the Ronne Ice Shelf all the way back in 1986 before getting trapped by surrounding ice. It escaped in 2020, only to be captured by Antarctica's cyclonic system. At the time of writing it has escaped that too and is on the move again. How big is it? Most articles compare its surface area to that of Rhode Island, a metric I suspect is of the most use to people who live in Rhode Island. So if by some chance you're reading this in Rhode Island, check out of your window for penguins.
There is a bewildering array of classifications for icebergs, as can be seen in this pretty comprehensive summary:
https://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/publications/icebreaking-deglacage/ice-navigation-glaces/page07-eng.html
You'll be glad to know I'm not going to go through all of them. Instead I'll just do my favourites, the first of which is bergy bits. They just sound fun, don't they, like little iceberg snacks? Try new Bergy Bits, now in red algae flavour!
Bergy bits are large chunks of glacial ice, often clear and their exposed size is on the scale of cars and buses. They're not as big as the huge tabular monsters roving around, but they're certainly a hazard to shipping.
My favourite is probably the growler, partly because it sounds a bit rude but also because I haven't been able to find a convincing reason for its name. The few theories I've seen suggest that it comes from the sound trapped gases make as they escape from the melting ice. This is either similar to an animal growling, or similar to the sound of gas being released from a beer keg, depending on where you read about it. There was a beer vessel called a growler in the 18th Century so I lean more towards that. Growlers are smaller than bergy bits but can still damage a ship, and they can be hard to spot so in some respects they are more dangerous.
I alluded to icebergs roving around earlier. This wasn't just me being fanciful for a change. They really do rove around, or rather appear to have their own agenda when compared to smaller pieces of ice in the vicinity. This is because surface ice is mostly affected by the tide, the wind and surface currents. Large icebergs on the other hand dangle their enormous bulk deep into the sea and interact with currents there. The different depths and shapes of these underwater behemoths mean they are directed in ways not at all obvious from the surface and it can look as though they have minds of their own.
Our final stop before Decption Island was Mikkelsen Harbour on nearby Trinity Island. I didn't take any photos with the View-Master camera there because it kept raining. Mikkelsen Harbour has an Argentine refuge hut that we could peer at from a distance. It was densely surrounded by penguins so anyone trying to use it would be in for a good flippering. The whole area was overrun with penguins, as evidenced by the layer of guano that coated the ice. I didn't want to slip and fall on the ice at any time, but I especially didn't want to end up covered in penguin poo. I hoisted my trouser legs up to avoid getting any there too. I took a photo of me standing in it which I think makes the situation clear. You can find it in the bonus selection linked at the bottom of the page.
The harbour was used as a whaling station at the start of the 20th Century, so there are plenty of whale bones lying around, along with the remains of a boat from god only knows how long ago. There's probably a record of it somewhere but I don't have time to go that deep with the research. Speaking of research, I got to watch one of the scientists climb up a treacherous looking slope to reach a rookery. I wondered how much penguin business he was getting himself into both figuratively and literally.
Also in the bonus photos are some penguins guarding their mind-control machine. Seriously though, I'm not sure what it is. My best guess is that it's monitoring apparatus. The black part on the top looks as though it can move which makes me think it's some sort of aerovane, or at least part of it is.
There's a bit of history to the harbour. Excitingly it was discovered by a different expedition from the usual suspects. This time it was the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901 to 1903. The name itself came later, when it was used as a whaling station by Peder Michelsen, who died there in 1910. The expedition, like most expeditions in the region, was beset by disaster. Their ship, the Antarctic, became trapped in the ice and crushed, forcing the crew to take shelter on Paulet Island. They were eventually rescued by an Argentine corvette, the ARA Uruguay. We actually visited the Uruguay after stumbling upon it while exploring Buenos Aires earlier. I didn't mention it in the blog but there are photos on Flickr that you can find via bonus photos link below.
Hope you didn't mind this ice and guano interlude. Next time we will be visiting an actual volcano!
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