We are no longer sailing east. We have turned south and are heading back towards Antarctica along the 150 W meridian. We will be very close to the shore in a couple of days, where we hope we will have chance to break some ice, see the continent again and observe more wildlife. That sounds great to me!
The scenery has changed since we turned south. There are a lot more icebergs floating around. We now see icebergs that a week ago would have summoned all cameras on deck, and now we enjoy them on a quick glance. It is not that they have lost their magic and beauty; we would not get any work done if we were to go out and photograph them all. Here is a recently sighted one.
A leaning tabular iceberg with bands
You can see that we are seeing deeper blue color on the icebergs as well as more bands. They are just amazing!
The icebergs that we are seeing now tend to be bigger and younger than before. How can we tell they are younger? Because the ones that have detached from the ice shelves more recently are still large flat slabs. The bergs with a flat top are called 'tabular'.
A large tubular iceberg
They melt as they age, and they do not do it homogeneously as an ice cube does on your glass of water. Some parts melt faster than other producing cracks that cut them in pieces, so older bergs tend to be smaller. Some of the bergs, like the one in the first picture above, begin to tilt as they melt These are called 'leaners'. Some other end up heavy top and flip over, so we cannot see their flat tops. A few will keep tumbling and end up with rounded edges. You can see in the small one below that the bands are no longer horizontal.
An iceberg that has been tumbled in the ocean. Bands are not horizontal any more
Over all, older bergs tend to be smaller with interesting jarred shapes. This is not a mathematical formula since some icebergs detach form the glaciers and not from ice platforms. They have random shapes since the beginning. We saw very large flat slabs far from the continent, and we see small jarred ones around here, but overall the younger the berg, the longer and flatter it is. The jarred ones, like the one below, tend to be older
A jarred iceberg during sunset
The newer icebergs we are seeing around here can still develop amazing shapes due to the uneven melting. Take this big leaned tabular iceberg on the picture below. It shows the flatness and two incredible arches. The picture shows only one arch, but there was another one on the other side. This one was able to gather a large crowd of photographers on deck.
Leaning tubular iceberg with arches
I hope you are not bored with the iceberg pictures. I am sure they will keep popping on the journal until we no longer see them.