James’ and Sara’s Excellent Antarctica Adventure

Day 13: Paradise Bay and Damoy Point

In answer to Sammy’s question, every passenger was given a heavy, waterproof jacket to keep, so I am only feeling any level of coldness around the face, and the hand that has to be gloveless in order to take photos. We are also loaned a pair of wellie boots with a special gadget to take them off.

Today’s coordinates ……

This was the landscape that we woke up to…

Most days there are two excursions…one morning and one afternoon but today we fit in 3 excursions because we got a helicopter flight.

Our first excursion was to Stony Point, which is the first time we have been on the continent of Antarctica (as opposed to the islands floating off the continent). You could have skied from this spot all the way to the South Pole (but this would take weeks)

The Scenic team made a big deal of this landing……

Then we went and explored the bay with all its icebergs( more education on icebergs coming later in this blog). A cute little crab eater seal tried to climb onto an iceberg but couldn’t so then he came to say hi to us!

And what do crab eater seals eat, I hear you ask? Not crabs….they eat krill!

The helicopter flight was awesome, although a touch scary . The pilot went REALLY close to some mountains.

You could see deep crevices in the glacier ( which apparently run to about 50 metres) and some beautiful icebergs floating in the water

Our afternoon excursion was to Damoy Point, the site of the British Antarctica Survey which operated between 1973-93 (We haven’t been able to visit any current research stations because they have been off limits since Covid). In 1975 a 400m ski-way was marked out along the spine of the glacier to enable twin otter aircraft to land , and the hut was built to support the airstrip operation

Time for an iceberg lesson

Ok, so did you know that there are a total of six different iceberg shapes: blocky (tall and flat), domed (like a turtle shell), drydock (U-shaped), wedge (pyramid topped), pinnacle (spire-shaped) and tabular. The tabular iceberg is apparently standard in Antarctica. I think there are many more shapes, but that’s based on what we are seeing rather than science.

And did you know that some icebergs get named and tracked?

Since 1978, the US National Ice Centre (USNIC) has tracked any iceberg in the Southern Hemisphere if it is more than 10 nautical miles long, or 20 nautical miles or greater.

And there is a naming convention, which is derived from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted. The quadrants are divided counter-clockwise in the following manner:

A = 0-90W (Bellingshausen/Weddell Sea)
B = 90W-180 (Amundsen/Eastern Ross Sea)
C = 180-90E (Western Ross/Wilkesland Sea)
D = 90E-0 (Amery/Eastern Weddell Sea)

For example C-19 is the 19th iceberg tracked by the Centre in Quadrant C. Icebergs with letter suffixes have calved from already named icebergs, where the letters are added in sequential order. And the Centre issues a press release every time there is a newly named iceberg

Here’s some of the wonderful shapes we have seen

And of course there’d have to be a matching cocktail. Unsurprisingly, it is called “Iceberg” ( tried to send the video but too big !)