9th March 2017, Day 5

T'was shaping up to be a beautiful morning. The golden rays were a welcome dose of colour and warmth, even as the biting cold wind practically tempted us to get back inside.

That's a constant dilemma we faced most days - it was beautiful outside but pretty cold too - do I go out or stay inside? And trust me, this was a hard choice...

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The water body off of Brown Bluff is known as Antarctic Sound, and the expedition leader was pretty excited to be there. Why?

If you look up Antarctic Sound on a map, you find that it connects to the Weddell Sea, which features a series of massive ice shelves. Ice shelves, if you remember from an earlier post, are "puddles" of ice floating on water while still connected by a neck to the land-based glaciers. As part of a natural process, pieces of the ice shelf calve off occasionally and when they do, they form a very unique form of iceberg: tabular icebergs that are hundreds of meters long and completely plateau-like on top. Antarctic Sound is one of the best places to see hundreds of such icebergs floating conspicuously in the ocean.

 And we set off, tiny Zodiacs dwarfed by gigantic icebergs bigger than the ship (and that was just what what was visible above the surface). #journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #iceconnoisseur #thatsalotofice #iceberg #cold❄ #nofilter



Yet again, it was the boat tour first for me. Today's highlight, the very many floating ice forms of Antarctica. You can see how big some of the bergs were compared to our Zodiacs!

All the while, these surreal iceforms, sculpted by wind and waves, surrounded and towered over us. I could tell you that icebergs are white because of the air bubbles in them. That the bluer the iceberg, the more likely it's been underwater where the water has burrowed thousands of holes which trap light reflecting only blue wavelengths. That the brown stains you might see on an iceberg are the sediment and rock it has scratched and dragged from land. Or that the oldest glacial ice is almost like see-through glassy crystal because all the bubbles have been squeezed out over time by the immense weight of the ice above it.

But all these facts would do nothing to communicate the magnificence these otherworldly icebergs exuded. You just had to be there.

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If a picture says a thousand words, I wonder if a mini-timelapse can do better to set the scene.

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Weaving left and right through the seemingly endless maze admiring the zigzag of the icescape skyline.

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Up close next to an overturned iceberg. You can easily tell from the bluish tinge, which in turn means that the berg is pockmarked with thousands of pores and channels from the action of water constantly lapping and eating away at the ice.

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A fuller view of the same iceberg. One of many, each with its own character, commanding a territory of superlatives and adjectives.

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Really, it was an iceberg safari, and each one was a sight to behold.

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Anatomy of an iceberg. Here you can see the most typical elements that icebergs feature.

At top-left, you can make out a pebble. That's part of the debris a glacier scratches and drags with it as it moves downhill towards the sea. In fact, this is why glaciers have a massive terraforming effect on the landscape - this grinding sandpapering process leaves indelible marks on the terrain. The fact that it's on top indicates that the iceberg has flipped over. It's easy to imagine why that would happen - as bigger icebergs calve into small pieces, or as the balance of an iceberg changes when the water eats away at it from below.

You can easily tell its glacial ice from the almost-glassy part in the middle. Like I mentioned before, ice is clear when it's pure, but appears white because of thousands of trapped air bubbles. What's astounding is that, even though ice is solid, when subject to immense pressure by the sheer weight above it, the air in the bottom layers of ice are "squeezed out", making it glassy and clear. This process can take a while, so the clearest ice might be thousands of years old. You're looking at something that should be in a museum, and there's thousands of similar bergs floating all around.

And finally, the layer closest to the water is showing the typical signs of channels (vertical stripes/ridges running in parallel) and pockmarks where the saltwater, wind and waves are constantly eating away at the berg, finding weak spots and eroding them.

Can you imagine that, on a planetary scale, this grand process of material recycling is happening all the time? Death comes even for 10,000 year old iceforms, and they must eventually return to whence they came.

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #iceconnoisseur #iceberg #anatomyofaniceberg #thatsalotofice #somethingpoetic #theonlyconstantischange #dealwithit #nofilter

(See last image in the grid above!) You can just make out a leopard seal resting under an overhang in an iceberg. Leopard seals are the apex predators of the Antarctic peninsula, sharing that honour with orcas. Like leopards, they have splotches(?) on their bodies and they hunt alone. On one of the days, a leopard seal even tried to bite the Zodiacs, bursting one of the inflated air chambers, but luckily it wasn't my boat. Not very cuddly and friendly, these fellas.

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #iceconnoisseur #polarexplorer #sealchaser #thatsalotofice #nofilter

When not hunting prey underwater, penguins swim in pods in a special way called "porpoising". This is the classic behaviour that dolphins are famous for, and penguins do it too. Why? Like everything else in biology, it's satisfyingly logical.. or should I say there's a porpoise behind everything? ;) Swimming like this conserves energy, especially when they have to cover more than a hundred kilometers without touching land.

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #penguinambassador #porpoising #likeadolphin #nofilter

Our welcoming party for the day were going to be lots of Gentoos. On the way to land, we spotted this bunch hanging out on some sea ice.

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25th April by the way is International Penguin Day. Imagine that, an entire day dedicated to the penguin, one of the most iconic and adorable of birds. Here's to you, little Gentoo and all your kind :)

#journeytothe7thcontinent #penguins #penguinambassador #internationalpenguinday #gentoo #magellanic #adelie #emperor #king #macaroni #chinstrap #rockhopper #antarctica

The majesty of Brown Bluff, with humans and icebergs for scale. What a sight to behold, this massive cliff glinting reddish-orange from between the wispy clouds at altitude, in stark contrast with the whitest firn (icy snow) on the slopes.

Ok get ready to have your mind blown. Brown Bluff as I mentioned is about 800m tall, and you can see how humans fare at this scale. Recall I mentioned in an earlier post that, if you stood on the South Pole, you would be standing on 4.8km of solid ice under you. So imagine a wall of ice 6 times as tall as Brown Bluff as seen in this photo... it somehow just doesn't compute in my head...

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #brownbluff #polarexplorer #nextstopsouthpole #thatsalotofice #tallerthanthewallinthenorth #nofilter

It was time to touch down on land. It was time for my first steps on the mainland of Antarctica, and what an epic spot to do just that - under the shadow of a volcano. Specifically when a volcano erupts from under an ice sheet, the quick cooling results in a distinctive squarish shape called tuya.

Can you make out how small humans were against the sheer cliff behind us?

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #touchdown #onesmallstepformanonegiantleapformankind #feltlikeit #nextstopsouthpole #volcano #epic #nofilter

The postmodernist in me would caption this as a rather Baudrillardian moment to be standing on Antarctica but commemorating it with a human representation of the Antarctic landmass.

The tourist in me queued up for the next photo ;)

Pretty surreal though, to finally step foot on a continent that remains remote in today's globalised world. I made it. I reached the 7th continent!

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #endoftheworld #onesmallstepformanonegiantleapformankind #feltlikeit #nofilter

The vista from land looking out. Again, so easy to lose sense of distance, height and scale. Consider this. The clouds in the distance are not lower than usual, they are the typical cloud line you would expect at high altitudes. So the peak in the distance is not only taller than the cloudline, we are far enough with an unobstructed view that you can glimpse it above the cloud line!

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #onesmallstepformanonegiantleapformankind #endoftheworld #feltlikeit #nextstopsouthpole #howbigisthisplace #itdoesntcompute #nofilter

Sometimes, just as important as observing what is right in front of your eyes is to notice what *isn't* there. In this case, as we enjoyed the views on Brown Bluff, we had the company of the cute Gentoos. But the Adelie penguins were nowhere to be seen although this is part of their known territory.

One of my expedition-mates, Maggie Dewane (@mmdewane) investigated this. Have a look-see.

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #penguinambassador #gentoo #wherearetheadelies #climatechange #climatechangeisreal #butterflyeffect #nofilter

Believe it or not, all of this happened just between breakfast and lunch, and the day was only half-done...

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As we set off, our next destination was still unknown. Antarctic weather can be fickle, so despite the best-laid plans, a storm rolling in might put a damper on the itinerary. Even on the first day itself, the expedition leaders had let us know that "the weather depends on you". A sentiment that we cheerily took to heart this day when the weather wasn't being cooperative at our intended second landing spot.

That said, the expedition leader promised a surprise if we were lucky. I wondered what it might be as we headed off into an increasingly cloudy grey sea.

Slowly icebergs, each easily a quarter the size of the ship or even three times larger, started dotting the horizon.

There are really not enough words in the English language to describe ice and its many avatars; so just see and let me know how you would describe them...

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #iceconnoisseur #iceberg #thatsalotofice #itdoesntcompute #theresmorewherethatcamefrom #likeanalienplanet #nofilter



Since the weather wasn't showing any signs of cooperating, the afternoon landing was ultimately dropped from schedule. Instead, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening alternating between introduction sessions with the rest of the IAE2017 participants and getting shot after shot of icebergs of all stripes.

Even this far out at sea, we spotted penguins hitching a ride on impossibly sculpted bergs. Tiny pangs of jealousy about their view of Antarctica on a daily basis.

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #iceconnoisseur #polarexplorer #iceberg #thatsalotofice #itdoesntcompute #theresmorewherethatcamefrom #nofilter

(not photos from my trip)

So now’s a good a time as any… Let me tell you a bit about Robert Swan OBE, one of the greatest living explorers, and the reason I was inspired to join the International Antarctic Expedition in 2017.

Rob is the first human to have walked to both the North and the South Poles, and in his characteristic humblebrag humour "the only person stupid enough to do something like that". :D In person, he was magnetic, tireless, charismatic. His unusual blue-gray eyes are from intense UV exposure during his last Antarctic expedition when he unknowingly walked under the hole in the ozone layer.

What really struck me about his story, especially while he was sharing his experiences during these adventures, was that he is celebrated for essentially the single moment of achievement when he touched either Pole... but to reach that moment, there were years of preparation, grueling days risking life and limb, and still some months after to truly get back to civilization. Such is the nature of achievement; we usually only see the glamour and don't fully recognize the sheer grit behind it.

In the second photo is his son Barney, also a charismatic chap and already an accomplished outdoorsman in his own right, who will be journeying to the South Pole again in November 2017 with Rob. Father and son together, they will be completing this journey using only renewable energy, which has never been attempted before! This expedition will be known as the South Pole Energy Challenge. If they succeed (they did succeed by the way!), it will go a long way to prove that renewables can support man even in the wildest of conditions.

Hats off to the Swans and good luck to my dear friends. You are an inspiration to us all. Please follow @2041climateforce to keep updated with their journey.

#journeytothe7thcontinent #robertswan2041 #polarexplorer #2041climateforce #whatagreatman #southpoleenergychallenge #inspiration #livingheroes #iftheycandoitsocanwe #nothingisimpossible #gogoteaminspire

We did spot a pod of orcas and kept up with them for a good hour or more. The resident whale expert on the ship had only awe and wonder for these fantastic animals, which if you recall, are apex predators in their respective ecosystems. You know what this means, time for summer school marine biology lesson!

Orcas are also known as killer whales, but they're actually part of the dolphin family. But as their alternative name suggests, they are a tad bit more violent that we would normally associate with their adorable-sized cousins.

In fact, they are fearless in these seas (save for humans whaling them) that they might even toss around seals just for fun, playing "tennis" and then leaving the seal disoriented on a iceberg and swimming off for their next distraction. They are capable of hunting in groups, using sophisticated maneuvers to get to their prey.

This also suggests that they are intelligent and communicate among themselves. Imagine the brain in an animal that size - we should not underestimate the sentience of these creatures.

The coolest thing I learnt about orcas is their echolocation capabilities. Their entire skull is designed like a sound transmitter-receiver antenna so they can "see" even in the dark depths of the ocean. (This is what the beluga whale was doing in Finding Dory, if you've seen it.) Just above the maw of these creatures is something called a fatty melon, which looks and functions like the lens in our eyes, but for echolocation. That means when a orca clicks, it can use the lens to focus the signal specifically at one spot with high precision and therefore "see" with high resolution! A functioning third eye that "sees" sound - how crazy cool is that?

Since the trip, it has become particularly heart-rending to see posts about whaling still being done by so-called advanced first-world countries like Denmark, Norway and Japan, especially on endangered species of whales... please stoppp!)

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #likeanalienplanet #whalewhisperer #whalewatching #summerschoolmarinebiology #orcasaredolphinstho #savethewhales #whatarewedoing #itdoesntcompute

Whales are intelligent creatures, and it is obvious to anyone who has seen them in the wild. Their brains alone weigh 5-7x more than ours, so just imagine the number of neurons and connections that underlie their consciousness. No animal deserves death, but on the spectrum of intelligence, the hunting of whales is close to murder. But we are blind to it because they are not of our species. Intolerable and barbaric.

#whalewhisperer #ceaseanddesist #thisisnotright #savethewhales

And then we saw the surprise that the expedition leader had promised us. Unfortunately it was the worrying kind.

We were sailing past a icy behemoth - easily 60-80m tall above the surface of the water and hundreds of meters long. So big, that no camera on board could truly get it all in one shot until the ship was sufficiently far away.

Imagine what its true size must have been if what we saw was merely the "tip of the iceberg". Our resident glaciologist calculated its volume using radar measurements and suggested that this iceberg had enough water to hydrate a single human (~3 liters a day) for about 4.5bn years, which is as long as Earth itself has existed. Truly astronomical numbers that the human mind can scarcely grasp at... (will be continued).

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #iceconnoisseur #iceberg #lookatthesizeofthatthing #thatsalotofice #itdoesntcompute #theresmorewherethatcamefrom #climatechange #climatechangeisreal #summerschoolglaciology #nofilter

Even from a distant vantage point, my camera couldn't capture the entirety of this ice-island that seemed to stretch across the horizon.

The question is where was it coming from? According to an expedition-mate (@tanishaarora) who checked with a glaciologist, this piece might have been broken off from the Larsen C or the Ronne-Filchner ice shelves.

While ice shelves regularly calve all sizes of icebergs as part of a natural process, the warming of the planet is slowly but surely increasing the frequency, duration, and the severity of calving. (Will be continued)

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #iceconnoisseur #iceberg #lookatthesizeofthatthing #thatsalotofice #itdoesntcompute #theresmorewherethatcamefrom #climatechange #climatechangeisreal #summerschoolglaciology #nofilter



Slowly the whole group gathered on deck, where Robert Swan OBE (will talk about him in the next post; see @2041climateforce) took some time to drive home the gravity of what we were witnessing.

The fact of the matter is that no one iceberg, no matter how big, is a smoking gun for climate change by itself. But to leave the discussion at that would be an injustice and a grave misunderstanding. In my view, we are so accustomed to instant gratification and fibrillations in the short-term that we have literally lost the art of understanding long-term cycles and trends.

The Larsen B ice shelf, an area of ice twice as large as Greater London, relatively stable for at least 10000 years, collapsed within a month in 2002. The Larsen C recently has been developing a rift that will create an iceberg the size of Wales, in the middle of Antarctic winter, at a time when ice formation should be peaking. Suffice it to say, this is highly unusual, not impossible but improbable.

These changes are not because of the emissions we created yesterday but from the emissions we put out since the Industrial Revolution. The emissions we put out today will come to bear decades from now.

If we wait for a direct undeniable smoking gun link between a natural event and climate change, if and when it comes, it will be too late to do anything about it.

#journeytothe7thcontinent #traveljournal #antarctica #antarcticahereiam #polarexplorer #iceconnoisseur #iceberg #lookatthesizeofthatthing #theresmorewherethatcamefrom #climatechange #climatechangeisreal #summerschoolglaciology #thinklongtermnotshortterm #whatarewedoing #letsfixthismess #nofilter

If that's not news enough, the water collecting on the icescape makes the surface darker, actually speeding up melting of the ice sheets in addition to the warmer sea water below the ice sheets. Melting from both top and bottom is now in motion.

I have glimpsed the vast ice fields of Antarctica, and from the photos I've been sharing, you have seen them too. There is a lot of ice, and when it melts, rising sea levels are a natural consequence. At this point, it is not a matter of if, but when. And the sooner we can slow the emissions curve, the more likely we can prevent runaway collapse. There is still time, but we are cutting it too close. Let's step up our efforts, please!

#journeytothe7thcontinent #newsupdate #antarcticaismelting #thatsalotofice #theresmorewherethatcamefrom #itdoesntcompute #anditsmelting #climatechangeisreal #letsfixthismess #letssaveourplanet

Day 6 was also an eye-opener in many ways…