Antarctic Sound

A cold night, sometimes busy steering through dense ice belts but on other occasions finding open channels and pools in-between. At a few miles from our next planned landfall at the northern shores of the Antarctic Peninsula mainland, engines go off and EUROPA drifts for a while before resuming her way with the first light of the new day. Like that, by the time we are having the first coffee of the day and a bit of the good breakfast served in the Deckhouse and Lounge, the anchor rattled down to the rocky sea floor, facing the spectacular volcanic cliffs of Brown Bluff, that with their orange-rusty colour climb up to 750m above sea level. 

At the beach, a wide flat area is home for Gentoo and Adelie Penguin Rookeries. At this time of the year, being already quite late in the season, the Adelie colonies are virtually empty, in contrast to how they looked about a month ago or even earlier, when the adults were taking care of eggs and chicks. Nevertheless some of them are still around finishing their moulting, surrounded by Gentoo chicks that wander around all over the place. 

From about 1 million years ago, with ice caps and glaciers much larger than what we can see nowadays, this area erupted in a volcano deep under the ice cover, With the time and different other eruptions, the geological structures that kept piling up above each other, left behind the large rocky walls that loom in the low clouds above our heads. The volcanism that happened in this region belongs to what is known as the James Ross Island Volcanic Group, ranging in age from the Miocene to present. Its original diameter is thought to have been about 12-15 kilometers. It left behind the interesting combination of basalts, tuff, breccia and pillow lavas that we could see during our morning landing. 

The site still offers more to see. Crossing the moraines that follow the southern end of the beach, soon we find ourselves walking over the gentle slopes of the enormous glacier that flows from higher up in the Antarctic Peninsula and calves into the Antarctic Sound.  

It is not always that one can set foot and do a little hike over an Antarctic glacier! Though care must be taken when descending and approaching its calving front. 

Ice blocks both from calvings and broken sea-ice pile up over the rocks along the foot of the ice cliffs. Amongst them a Weddell seal rests. Looking seawards, at one side we have the ample bay of Brown Bluff, at the other a vertical glacier front, in front ice floes drifting around. Atop one of them a Leopard seal was spotted. What a good chance to use the zodiacs that were coming to picking us up to have a closer look at it. 

What will be next? Well, things are not so straightforward when sailing in the Eastern area of the Antarctic Peninsula. There is much more of “Let’s go, try and see” than a fixed plan or schedule. And this afternoon, a clear example of that. 

Around the corner from Brown Bluff Tabular icebergs are grounded all across the waterway that leads deeper into the Weddell Sea. They act as a barrier that catches all around them and for many miles, the thick sea-ice from the north of the Weddell sea. Ice that is thick and solid enough to allow for a short walk. Below our feet, several hundred meters of water. Somewhere down there still lays the battered hull of the ship Antarctic. It was in 1901 when she left Sweden under the command of Captain Anton Larsen, in a memorable expedition to the Weddell Sea led by the 32-year-old geologist Nordenskjold. One of the teams successfully overwintered at Snow Hill Island in a pre-fabricated hut, while the ship and rest of her crew were supposed to return the next season to collect them. But then, an unfortunate turn of events made for the Antarctic to sink in the heavy pack ice of this area. 

Three men ended up stranded at the neighboring Hope Bay, the rest made their way over the ice to set up a winter hut at Paulet Island. Luckily, after many adventures and misadventures, they got rescued by the Argentinean Government with the Corvette Uruguay. 

Amongst the icebergs and looking for a good ice-floe where to set foot, the zodiacs make their ways on the Fridjorf Sound, which takes the name from a vessel dispatched from Sweden to search for the Swedish Antarctic Expedition when it was feared lost in 1903. At one side of them tower the glacier fronts and steep rocky outcrops of the Antarctic Peninsula. On the other, the glaciated islands of Jonassen and Andersson. The first one, named after Ole Jonassen, who accompanied Nordenskjöld on his two principal sledge journeys in 1902-03. The second, after Dr Johan Gunnar Andersson, one of the expedition geologists. 

Ahead of us and as far as the eye can see extends the Erebus and Terror Gulf, today completely filled up with what seems to be a continuous layer of floating ice. 

Erebus and Terror. Two expedition ships that undertook an astonishing navigation together around Antarctica during 1839 to 1843 at the hands of James Clark Ross and Francis Crozier respectively. They sailed through the Ross and Weddell Seas and the Falkland Islands. Later on, Franklin, a good friend of Ross, took them both on his quest in the Arctic in search for the mythical Northwest Passage. Both were lost together with all the crew in the area of the Victoria Strait in Canada. Until very recently all the efforts made to find them have failed but now the resting place of the ships has been finally found.