Nice sunny day out there with a smooth sailing. I feel so much more productive when the seas are calmer. I am happy to report that I got an ID for the birds on the birds living on the ice patch. Thanks to Bill, a PolarTREC teacher who wrote to say the bird I showed flying on ventral and dorsal views is an Antarctic Petrel, and the small white ones on the ice are Lesser Snow Petrels. Thanks again Bill. Back here on the boat, Chris asked me to looked up through the porthole and this is what I found
A wave breaking on an iceberg
Imagine how would the wave breaking on the iceberg would look like if the seas were not as calm as they are now.
On some other news, we will cross the date line today! We will go back in time and have the opportunity to live yesterday's night again. We are currently on Wednesday March 2 at 1:10 pm at a station located at longitude 179.41. Since the dateline is at 180 degrees, we will soon be back on a Tuesday March 1. How soon depends on when we finish the trace metals cast that is going on. We will then sail a couple of hours towards the past.
This brings a wonderful opportunity for reflexion. What would I do differently from what I did last night? I would not change much, if anything, as I enjoyed watching the sunset from the bridge, pedaling on the stationary bike and a nice comforting warm shower before bed. I would probably go to bed a bit earlier, but that is it.
Scratch all that. Our time is a social construct. The captain wisely decided we will keep the same time on the boat until we return to the dateline again. I am not sure if that means we will not have crossed the date line until then or what. What do you think?
Let us take a look at the trajectory for our trip again to understand why would we go back to the date line later on the cruise.
Cruise trajectory
We are to the East (right) of number 3 on the map (remember that North is up; East is to the right, South is down and West is to the left on this and most maps). Number 9 is along the dateline, so we will continue sailing East in the next days to number 4, turn South towards number 5 and 6, sampling all along, and then sail SouthWest to recover some moorings on 7 and 8. We will go back to the date line where 9 is and then start playing with the clocks on the ship as we go once again East. Here is a view of the most recent iceberg spotted from the Palmer.
An iceberg near the dateline
I rejoice about the crossing of the date line now, but I might regret this moment in a few days. There is a nautical tradition of 'celebrating' a person's first crossing of major map lines, such as the date line, which involve placing people in uncomfortable situations. At least that is what the first and second mates were telling me happened when they crossed the date line. They still remember their rite of passage, and not very joyfully. I will let you know, if and when it happens, how bad it is. I think they will defer the celebration to sometime towards the end of the cruise. I should say that as far as I understand, the celebration is optional. I am sure I will participate since my macho pride would suffer too much if I wimp out.
We will also get to cross the Antarctic Polar Circle, another major line with its own rite of passage. I am hoping for a celebration bundle that will ease both crossings.
I will not post this comment until we cross the line. I will go to the bridge and take a picture, in case there is a red bright line painted on the surface of the ocean. I would not want to miss that.
We have crossed the date line, Woohooo!! and, there was no red line along the ocean. Here is another view of the same iceberg. It looks very different because we moved a bit around it and because the sun is lower in the horizon. We spent three hours on a station around the iceberg.
View if the same iceberg but couple of hours later from the another side
The last piece of news is about the ice at McMurdo. You might remember I wrote a piece on how fast the ice was disappearing in front of McMurdo Station. My wife sent me news from a website based on New Zealand. Apparently the US and New Zealand Antarctic operations are struggling to move people and equipment out of McMurdo and Scott's Base (New Zealand base) because the Ross Ice Shelf is separating quickly from Ross Island where both bases are. Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson is quoted as saying 'We are seeing the biggest ever break out of the Ross Ice Shelf in 15 years, our supply lines to the airfield are getting affected'. He explains that there had been unusual ice conditions in the past years due to big icebergs that broke from the Ross Ice Shelf, that where blocking the entrance to McMurdo sound and led to massive mutli-year sea ice. So the dramatic disappearance of ice that we witnessed while in McMurdo appears to not be related to climate change but to iceberg dynamics in the area. Meanwhile they are sending two US Air Force Globemasters as an emergency airlift to remove people from McMurdo and Scott bases before the runaway disappears.