Whale Wake-Up Call

Today we were woken up by an announcement by the captain that there were humpback whales on the port side—aka RIGHT outside our window! It was impossible to get a picture of the two young males breaching, but it was amazing to see so up close and from the comfort of my own bed! It almost reminded me of when I woke up to an elephant next to my bed in Tanzania. The whales stayed there for about 45 minutes, and it was definitely a good way to start the morning.

In the late morning, I attended a lecture on climate change, which was interesting but incredibly scientific and long. I did learn that during the winter ice in central Antarctica has been increasing, however, which many scientists fail to mention. Also, for whatever reason we are also seeing more ice around Antarctica. Apparently, the oceans aren’t as warm here as they are in the Arctic, which could be why the warming process is so slow down here, contrary to popular belief.

Later in the afternoon, we began sailing through a large body of water with a ton of ice. I looked out our cabin window and all I saw was ice like this for miles!

Surprisingly, we were able to take the zodiacs out in all that ice. On the larger ice shelves, we looked for seals and we saw quite a few!

We also found great beauty in icebergs. Below is my favorite of the day!!!

As we were making our way back to the boat, our zodiac driver Lollie said “and now a surprise!” From far away, it looked like a zodiac broke down because two zodiacs were hooked together and one of them only had two people. When we got closer, however, our driver hooked our zodiac onto the other two and we saw crew members serving us hot chocolate!

 It was a great surprise and we all enjoyed some hot chocolate in the middle of Antarctica!  (Never thought I would say that!!!!) When we were very close to the boat, we spotted a piece of ice that almost looked crystalized. You’re probably thinking, “Ice? What’s so special about that? Antarctica is FULL of that!” Well, this ice was special. We learned that it was probably thousands of years old and if you took a drill and analyzed the air bubbles, you would see what the atmosphere was like when the air bubbles were first trapped in the ice.

What a fun day!!!