Images of

ANTARCTICA

Boating

Photos © 2004 Seth White

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I had heard that going out in the Zodiac boats was a popular thing at Palmer, but before I got here I had doubts whether or not I'd actually be able to. The first thing was the conditions...I didn't know if we'd have enough daylight or if the sea ice would have built up around the station. Turns out, we still have decent light (boating is allowed for about 4 hours a day now) and there is no ice except for a little bit of loose brash ice and a few small icebergs. The second thing was the whole idea of a "boondoggle". At McMurdo, getting off station can often be difficult or impossible, as an already bizarre bureacracy becomes more capricious and arbitrary than usual when it comes to off-station travel for recreation. But at Palmer it is a different story. A few days after we arrived, the boating coordinator (Rick) held the "Boating I" class for the newcomers. Here, we got an overview of the basics of safe boat travel around the Palmer area. After this session, you are now OK'd to travel as a passenger in a boat. To lead a boat trip you must complete "Boating II", which goes into more depth on safety, emergency scenarios, communications, survival caches, boat landings, weather, etc. So I did Boating I and had been keeping an ear open for possible trips. I asked Rick one day at lunch if he was heading out any time soon, and yep, he was going out the next day to map a little spot using GPS. I had done a little bit of GPS'ing before, so I came along and pushed the buttons while he drove the boat. No fuss, no muss. No groveling of maneuvering to get yourself out on a trip, no fretting about getting the 82 levels of permissions to leave station, none of that. Kevin, the other beaker currently on station, also had to go around and mark some of his dive sites with GPS, so he came out too. Rounding out the group was Corey, who is here on station for a short stay working on capital equipment. So we all got in our "float suits" (orange, insulated full-body outfits) and headed out. This is the view of Palmer Station about 1 km away. It really is just a tiny little outpost on a tiny little rock, surrounded by massive pieces of Antarctica. In a way, it reminded me of McMurdo...when you get a ways away from McMurdo on the sea ice, it is just a little dot on the rocks at the end of a peninsula. The peninsula (Hut Point Peninsula) is almost completely covered in snow, and it leads to a huge mountain (Erebus) which dominates the scene. Here, Palmer is at the end of Gamage Point, with the Marr Ice Piedmont behind it, and Mt. Williams towering overhead. And the station looks very, very insignificant.

Unbeknownst to me, our planned route encompassed most of the permissible boating area around Palmer Station (about a 2 miles radius from the station). Kevin wanted to visit a number of different dive sites scattered all over the area, so that's what we did. Rick also drove us on slight detours to see a few extra things...like Loudwater Cove. This is a picture of the glacier face which dumps into the cove. Boating is not allowed within 300 meters of an active glacier face, and one of the reasons should be pretty obvious from looking at this picture. Any part of this glacier could come crashing down on your head at any time, and in fact at station you routinely hear the loud cracks of icebergs calving off in the distance. What may be less obvious is that the wave generated when the ice hits the water can easily flip your boat. You don't want this...

Another one of the glacier face. Every time I walk around station I try to look at the glacier as much as possible to catch a piece of ice falling off. I hear it all the time, but by the time the sound gets here it's all done. I finally caught a mid-size chunk breaking off this afternoon, and it was most excellent. Now THAT'S proper Antarctica. I can call it quits from the USAP now, since I have seen the two quintessential Antarctic things: penguins, and icebergs calving off a glacier. Oh, those two things AND a drunken sod passed out in the 155 lounge at McMurdo with sharpie drawings of obscene things all over his face.

Here is Rick steering us along. It takes some awareness to get through the waters around Palmer. If you are going fast enough and hit a large enough chunk of ice, it can put a hurt on your boat and outboard motor. Rick seemed to be particularly adept at dodging ice, and Kevin has done some diving around here and thus been in the boats quite a bit. So with the two of them looking out, Corey and I didn't have to do much except enjoy the ride. Speaking of ice, there was a good amount of brash ice floating around. Brash is basically compacted snow and not solid ice. You can see it very clearly, since it is white against the dark sea. Another type of ice is "bar ice", which is solid ice. This stuff is formed over inside glaciers over many years (sometimes thousands), and is under enough pressure for a long enough time that all the air in the snow is pushed out, leaving just clear ice. This stuff is harder to see (and harder to avoid while driving) since it's transparent.

But, it is standard practice at Palmer to pick up a piece of this stuff now and then and bring it back to the Station...for use in your drinks. So Rick spotted this piece of bar ice and decided to heave it on board. Pretty stuff, actually, and it will be a shame to chip into it. But I have never had a White Russian with 1000 year old ice, so its fate is sealed.

There is a slew of islands around Palmer, some of which you can always land on, some of which are always forbidden, and some of which change depending on the season. The reasons are purely ecological. Palmer Station is a Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, for biological reasons, and some of the islands around the station are protected under the Antarctic Conservation Act. Today, we didn't have to land anywhere so we just drove around with GPS receivers in hand. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to tag along on a bird-weighing trip and go ashore on one of these islands. Anyhow, this is a generic coastline of one of these islands. I thought the layers of white and grey were pretty.

Another inhospitable shoreline.

We rounded the tip of an island and almost immediately the sea got a little rougher. Kevin remarked "...turned into a swell day". Yuk yuk. So we made our way along a little slower for a while. It was actually a challenge trying to get decent pictures from this boat, and I only partially succeeded. The low light made for longer exposures, which is hard from the side of a rocking inflatable boat with a vibrating motor. Plus, changing batteries, flash cards, keeping the lens clean, protecting the camera from sea spray and ice buildup, and so on, all as fast as possible to keep the hand-out-of-the-gloves time to a minimum (my hands tend to get cold quickly). I probably took 200 photos along the way, and the 24 on this page is about as good as they got. This view here, although it wasn't the prettiest scene of the trip, somehow caught my attention. It reminded me of an excellent photo of Elephant Island taken by Joan Myers (see here). I met her at McMurdo last year and we have stayed in touch. In her picture, a rocky figure appears out of the sea, with mists and fog in the background. It seemed to me to be a very Antarctic photo, especially considering this was the island where Shackleton miraculously found a landing site, and then his men had to stay there for many months, not knowing if they would ever be found. This view, especially since it was first-hand, struck me the same way. And the slightly rough seas drove the point home... I really thing that surviving in this kind of place would quickly pass beyond my limits. I'll take my Antarctica in the form of tweaking an instrument in a heated hut with an internet connection any time, thank you very much. That is, with occasional jaunts off station!

Along our way, Rick stopped at the wreck of the Bahia Paraiso. This was a ship which sank a ways from station in 1989. It was an Argentine ship with some tourists on board, on its leisurely way to refuel an Argentine station, of which there are many on the Peninsula. They have this ridiculous feud with Chile about who can assert more dominance in this area of the world (which they both believe they own, although the rest of the world says otherwise). They have gone so far as to establish little colonies complete with families and schools. The first person born in Antarctica was an Argentine in 1978 (I think). So yeah, anyhow, the concensus around Palmer Station is that this ship sank because of arrogance, plain and simple. The spot where it went down has some barely submerged rock pinnacles. There pinnacles are on the US maps, the British maps, but not the Argentine maps. Some of their ships had been seen to come in and out through this area, but despite warnings they continued to do this. And then one day the captain of the Bahia Paraiso decided to head through here. And guess what, the ship sank, spilled its entire load of fuel, and so I'm told, lost two 10 million dollar helicopters which were probably worth more than the damn ship itself. The ship took about a day to sink, and nobody was killed. However, Palmer Station is full to the brim with 46 people...so imagine several hundred stranded people getting dumped on the station to await transport. And, oh, by the way, this was the worst ecological disaster in the history of Antarctica. As we motored by, we could still smell the stench of fuel. Kevin said that when they dive here, they always see a slick of oil on the water. You can't see too much from the surface - this is a photo of the waves lapping over the crest of the bottom of the hull. Another thing about the Argentines...earlier this season a plane suddenly showed up at Palmer (which has no landing strip). It was a bunch of Argentines on a joy ride. They flew in without even having the courtesy to radio and proceeded to buzz the station. Johan, the science tech, has a movie file of the fly-by which he showed me earlier tonight. They came in VERY low and tight over a group of beakers in a zodiac, and then gave the station itself a "haircut". Arrogance indeed. The USAP has its own unique set of problems, but these two examples are not the type of thing we would do.

So back to our most excellent boat excursion. This is a good picture of an island cliff, with a cloud bank and some ice in the background.

Here is more or less the same photo, but with a petrel flying by. We saw several of these along the way...most of them brown but one white one, which I understand are much rarer. Very large but graceful birds. And they have the habit of flying very low to the sea and rolling slightly, almost touching their wingtips to the waves before suddenly jerking away to avoid the crest of an oncoming wave. We also saw an Antarctic Tern, some Cormorants, and some Gentoo penguins swimming along... presumably sucking up their fill of krill. No seals today, though. I understand this place just teems with wildlife during the summer season. But even the small numbers of critters still hanging around at this time of year seems like a regular Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom to me. All during 2002-03 at McMurdo, I saw exactly 5 penguins, 5 or so Emperor penguins (at a distance), perhaps 10 Weddell seals, 1 Crabeater seal, and a hoard of skuas. And of course incalculable numbers of weasel-looking things that congregate and breed on Hut Point Peninsula (commonly known as "middle managers").

Another photo of the forbidding rocky peaks in the distance.

A little farther along, the seas calmed down and the sun started to light things up a little. This is another picture of the mountains in the distance, only this time with a little more color.

More of the same.

And more.

Here are Mt. Williams and another smaller peak, sort of the Erebus and Terror of Anvers Island.

Mt. Williams again, with brash ice floating in the sea ahead. I like the way this one turned out.

After the GPS'ing was done, we headed back toward station. A hole in the clouds appeared and some sunlight came through. Following are four pictures of this, with the usual glacier in the background and some reflections on the water.

We had one last little GPS point to get near the station, so here is Palmer itself.

A little Antarctic winter outpost.