Rime of the Modern Mariner

[This post written 6/12/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -44’28”; temp 0C; wind chill -14C]

Still not feeling very well — though some Sudafed supplied by Bruce Robison has helped a bit. However, today’s events waited for no one. The iceberg broke apart in quite a big way last night. John Helly estimates (roughly, he emphasizes) that 10-15% of the iceberg broke off, probably in the wee hours this morning. The smaller chunk is quite a different shape from the original. You can see in the picture above a tongue of the ice that used to be underwater, but is now above it due to the transformations in mass.

This new iceberg, it turns out, is just the right shape and size for a penguin playground. We got to watch a mob (yes, a mob, not a flock) of penguins doing their penguin things — waddling, squawking, clapping, sliding — at fairly close range. My lens would not zoom enough for a really good photo, but I suspect there’ll be more opportunities before our voyage is over. Identifying the variety was not easy, because we weren’t really close enough. But the consensus is that these were probably chinstrap penguins.

Later, I went down to the lab on the main deck and watched as the biologists sorted through the latest haul from the MOCNESS contraption. It’s fascinating, the variety of tiny creatures that live, free-floating in the upper reaches of the sea. There’s an astonishing number of gelatinous organisms of various sorts, mostly salps in these waters, it seems. But Danny Garcia also showed me some sort of jelly worm whose main defining feature, as far as I can tell, is a set of unpleasant-looking teeth at one end. There are krill, too, of course, and sea worms, like ocean-going centipedes. It’s quite a wonderland of the weird and unimaginable.

In other news of the day, I managed to do my laundry, hooray. After three weeks on the go, it was high time. You might wonder, in fact, how I managed to go this long. The thing is, in Antarctica, one doesn’t sweat. 🙂

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