Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Well, I missed our “first” iceberg because I was sleeping. It was seen at 2am. However, when I woke up they surrounded us in an area called Enterprise Island. This morning, we took a zodiac cruise around the ice and islands. It was just amazing. The zodiacs are the way that we take people ashore and to see the area. Each zodiac holds between 8 and 10 people. We saw a shipwreck, some Weddel seals and Crabeater Seals. We also saw many amazing iceberg formations. I’ve attached a photo of one of the more interesting icebergs I saw this morning. There is a zodiac next to the iceberg so you can see what they look like as well.



One of the icebergs we saw while zodiac cruising around Enterprise Island

After lunch, we saw about three Humpback whales and a few Minke whales. They hung around the ship for a little while and I watched them swim around the many icebergs surrounding the ship.

This afternoon, we landed at a place called Neko Harbor (Latitude: 64 61616 50’ south Longitude: 62 61616 33’ west). It is actually on the continent of Antarctica. It is very difficult to find a place to land on the continent because the majority of it is covered in ice and snow. I was asked what Antarctica looked like. Here is a photo that I took from the ship, showing the bow of the ship with Antarctica in the background. Here, on the Antarctic Peninsula there is more exposed rock than anywhere else on the continent, some of which you can see in this photo. However, the majority of the continent is covered in snow and glaciers. Some even say that Antarctica is like one huge glacier!

The view of Antarctica from the bow of the Polar Star

Neko Harbor was fantastic. There was more snow there than I have ever seen before. I think that is because I am usually here at the end of the season (late summer) and this is early summer, so much of the snow has not yet melted. In fact, it snowed off and on today. At Neko, there a bunch of Gentoo penguins, many of who were sitting on their nests made of pebbles. It was fun to watch them walk back and forth to the sea going to feed. It was also fun to watch some of the penguins maintain their rock nests, gathering pebbles from around the area and depositing them along the edge of their nest. I was lucky enough to get a photo of one of the Gentoo penguins as it shifted positions on its nest. Look closely and you can see the egg it is incubating. Gentoo penguins lay two eggs each season. The eggs should be hatching soon. In some places, they may have already hatched. I’ll be sure to send a photo of a baby penguin if I see one.

A Gentoo penguin incubates their egg