A43K
[This post written 6/16/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -43’40”; temp -6C; wind chill -20C]
We have a few comments since my last post. First, from Jill (on “Long Nights, Short Days”). Thank you for your thoughts. Glad you’re enjoying the blogs. I’m not reading any blogs, since we have no Web access on the ship. I meant that the writing of the blogs has been helpful for me. It’s a type of work I very much enjoy. Also, I didn’t mean to say that depression is a problem on the ship. Not at all. In fact, there is general good cheer. I only mean that it’s a bit of work to maintain it in the cold and dark. So we exercise and we work hard, and we celebrate our triumphs when they come. (We had a special chocolate cake tonight, for example, to celebrate the good day I’m about to describe.) Until a few days ago, I was feeling glum because of seasickness, but that probably would have made me gloomy even in Taihiti. 🙂 I’m happy to say it has abated now. Phil, about the amount of sunlight so close to the solstice. There’s more daylight than I expected, too. This is partly because we are several degrees further north than we expected to be. The icebergs further south have not obliged.
I recall thinking as I awakened today that the sea seemed almost impossibly smooth. I wondered if I had somehow been transported back to dry land in the night. I could detect almost no motion in the ship. A glimpse through our porthole confirmed this. The water was smooth. Rising up from it like Moby Dick on steroids was A43K.
A43K, the next iceberg we’ll be studying, is roughly 15 miles long, 2 miles wide, and a hundred feet high. As Antarctic tabular icebergs go, it is good-sized, though not enormous. Think about that. 15 miles long. We spent three hours circumnavigating it at a reasonable clip. It has bays and inlets and shores where the waves crash like thunder. Many cities cover fewer square miles. Many islands are smaller. And it is not particularly large.
As I edged my way out on the catwalk again — for this was where the best views could be had — I wondered if any human being had ever seen this iceberg before. It seemed unlikely to me. The sea is so vast and so empty, and these latitudes so seldom traveled. And none of these icebergs have been here long in the larger scheme of things.
Though the sky was leaden and the barometer falling, the weather was perfect for flying. So, seizing the moment, our engineers got the second of our little RC airplanes aloft. As a pod of Minke whales grazed on krill nearby, and snow petrels, apparently indignant at this invasion of their airspace gave chase, Kim Reisenbichler guided the plane through a perfect takeoff and a beautiful delivery of the GPS payload. Video footage from the camera aloft shows breathtaking scenes of a blue-green shelf swooping down from the iceberg’s face into the sea, and the padded beacon dropping down onto the smooth, snowy surface of the berg. (I’ll see if I can get a few stills from Paul McGill to post tomorrow.) The rocky landing, which damaged the plane, was the only imperfect part of the flight. The mission succeeded. What once required the danger and expense of a helicopter is now proven to require considerably less.
Tonight we will cast the MOCNESS into the water and see if what it gleans differs from what it gleaned in our previous hunting ground. Tim Shaw, Ben Twining, and the microbiologists are already hard at work gathering water samples. And tomorrow, the new ROV (which the engineers have christened The Phoenix), will have its maiden voyage, weather permitting.