Sunsets and Seals

Sunset and a seal

The 7/1/17 marked two weeks to go and even this late in the trip I was still getting ‘firsts’. CTDs along the SR3 transect finished up and we headed off to the Mertz. On the way, I saw my first ‘Dirty Iceberg’. It looks a bit like an iceberg with chocolate topping poured over it. When I first saw it, I was like ‘wharr?’ but it makes total sense. Glaciers carve out landscapes, they scape rocks and soil and it becomes part of the ice. When it carves, the rocks and soil are part of the iceberg. The soil and rocks heat up in the sun faster than the ice and start to work their way out of the berg, which is why it look like the soil is dripping out of the berg. Very cool.

Dirty Berg

At this point in the trip I started having some amazing encounters with the non-penguin birds. One day when we were stationary on the sea ice, a South Polar Skua circled the ship several times. It appeared out of nowhere and was hovering over the metal crates on the heli deck. They feel a bit like vultures, scavengers of the dead and vulnerable. Rumor has it, if you lay down face up with your sunnies on, they will land and peck at you glasses (I forgot to try). I think it was looking for scraps, maybe it thought we were a trawler. I was in the right place at the right time and took hundreds of photos. At one point it was so low, it was about 2 m about my head. When I checked back through the photos, I saw it was looking dead at us. In almost every photo. It was switched on and knew we were watching and it didn’t care.

Skua
Image by Amanda Dawson

Watching us watch it
Image by Amanda Dawson

That night I also learnt how Giant Southern Petrels sleep. Around dusk, three of them circled the ship several times, when I was down on the focsle, checking us out. 

After, they had seen enough of us they flew over to an ice floe near the ship and landed. They just landed gracefully on the ice, and went to sleep! They were joined by a white morph southern pertel. They were so frickin cute all tucked up in a ball on the ice having a snooze. By 1 am I saw at least a hundred Giant Southern Petrels all doing the same thing. So many variations of colour; Southern giants have variable amounts of white on them. They were snoozing, then, they’d get up to circle the ship, then land again. 

Snoozing Giant Southern Petrels

Giant Southern Petrels (white and brown morphs)

A bunch landed on this tiny piece of ice about the size of a coffee table and they squabbled over who would get to stay.  I noticed that when one petrel landed on an empty floe, the others would join it quickly. It was like no one wanted to be the first to land, but no one wanted to be left behind. They were so dopey on land too, they waddle, I presume because of their huge wings.

I started staying up every night to watch the sunset – most nights it was around 1am and we had variable amounts of night. Apart from the nights when the sun didn’t set at all, the shortest I remember was around 50 mins of dark.

The first sunrise I saw on the trip was 2:46 am. After 2 hrs of  'night'. Very pretty.

Between SR3 and Mertz, most of the scientists were a bit idle and so we made up experiments for ourselves. There is a theory that people who hate coriander have an enzyme in their mouth that digests coriander making it taste like soap. The theory goes that a person with the soap enzyme chews up coriander spits it out and another person eats it, they will taste the soapy taste. So yeah we tried it. Ella hates coriander, thinks it taste like soap, Madi said she’d try it – for science. We did it blinded, so Madi and Ella both chewed a small chunk of coriander, they both spat it onto a plate. Madi closed her eyes and we mixed up the plates and she ate both without knowing which was which.  AND… She said they both tasted pretty much the same. We came to two conclusions, either there weren’t enough spitty enzymes on the coriander (although ella said it tasted just as horrible as always) or Ella doesn’t make the enzyme and she just hates coriander. Yey science.

Mertz Glacier

When we arrived at the Mertz, I woke up and everyone seemed to be rushing around, heading upstairs. So I got all dressed up and headed out, and there it was, the Mertz glacier. My first glacier. Honestly, I didn’t really know what I was looking at. For one thing, there was coastline on all sides of the ship except the behind us. Which side was glacier? It all looked like icebergs; steep cliffs. Except one side, which was soft rolling hills. I pointed at the cliff, what’s that, It’s the glacier, they say. Which bit is glacier? All of it.

Mertz glacier is the pale blue ice; the ship's position with land on all three sides

Ice cliffs, the glacier is running down the mountain behind it

It’s so big I can’t wrap my head around it. I headed back inside to orientate myself on the sea ice map.  IT IS ALL GLACIER! We are in a little bay on the left side of the glacier. All three sides of the ship are glacier, steep ice cliff. On side also has the rolling hill, which is continent.  It’s too big to photograph, it’s too big for a panorama. If you squint you can see the glacier high up behind the water level cliffs flowing down the side of the continent, rushing down to the sea at an astonishing rate of cms per years. It’s pretty mind boggling.

Ice cliffs of Mertz seconds after a (small) calving 

The tongue used to be 100km long, but it broke off about 6 years ago when a giant iceberg collided with it. As we were approaching Mertz, we sailed along where the tongue used to be, and you couldn't see the coastline from where we were. I can't even imagine anything that big.

Mertz glacier is named after one of Mawson's expeditioners, Xavier Mertz, who died on the glacier. Around 100 years later, his body is still up on the glacier. Can you imagine if it ended up on an iceberg? And you were sailing around the Antarctic and you see a body sticking out of an iceberg??   

Merfie (Mertz Selfie)

We started CTDs again at the front west corner of the Mertz Glacier and then along the west edge of the glacier tongue, keeping about one nm from the glacier itself. The Antarctic plateau, Mt Hunt and Madigan Nunatak can be seen in the distance. Mertz is awesome. We got so close!! Dangerously close, I feel, like maybe 200m away. I felt like it could touch it. I spent so long outside that my fingers went pretty numb. I also saw another skua, it circled the ship 5 or 6 times looking for something to prey on, or someone’s eyes to peck out. 

“I really love skua’s. Like mini cold vultures”.

We had another orca spotting in front of the Mertz. This has happened a few times and the drill is the same. Shoes back on ( I always take them off in the library), sprint as fast as you can to the room to get cold weather gear and camera, run outside. This time, though I didn’t stop at my room, my beanie was in the library, so we sprinted straight up to the focsle. They surfaced in front of the glacier. At least 15 big orcas, with 2-3 males with enormous fins. They were heading away from the ship, they were close enough to see in pretty good detail, swimming in front of the glacier with sea ice floating all around. They were stunning with big black sleek bodies. They were only visible for a minute, and then they moved off out of view.  

Orcas in front of Mertz Glacier Image by Zane Hacker