Antarctica East 2026

Jan 11, Seaday

Ok, firstly a weather report…..it has been as calm as anything. We have been really lucky because the cruise immediately before this one faced 7 metre waves. It’s also not that cold yet …we haven’t reached a minus temperature but expect it will be minus in a couple of days.

Currently our location is 63 deg South and 164 deg East ( is that what you wanted, Martin?)

Two of the solo travellers are affected by the bushfires in regional Victoria and the irony is that, because the bushfires have been affecting telecommunications, the two travellers have been sending the latest information from ABC news in Antarctica back to their friends in regional Victoria. They today received good news that the fires stopped short of their homes.

Today was a very busy day….we had to test out our boot sizes, inspect our outer clothing to ensure we removed any suspicious seeds, and try on the immersion suit (which we will have to wear if the helicopter flies over water )

Learnt a lot about whales today which I know you are keen to hear.

Essentially 2 groups of whales: Toothed whales and Baleen whales

Baleen whales…have baleen instead of teeth ( baleen is like a hairy mat) and can be very large. They include minke whales, which can travel at 40 km/hr and are loud;  fin whale which is second largest whale in the world  and are known as greyhounds of the ocean, sei whales and blue whales which are the largest mammal on earth…(larger than dinosaur) humpback whales and southern right whales which can live up to 200 years.

We saw humpback whales this morning ….

I bet you didn’t know that the Southern  Right Whale has one of the largest penises in the animal kingdom,reaching up to 4 metres long which allows for complex mating behaviors, often involving multiple males competing for one female. Their testes also weighing up to a ton to produce massive amounts of sperm for competition

Toothed whales….yes they have teeth, are very social, tend to be in family groups, can navigate using sonar, and are very intelligent. Examples include killer whales (orcas), long finned pilot whales, and sperm whales.

And we also got to see the long finned pilot whales today 

This handy diagram is to help you spot whales..usually you see the blow first, then you can look at the dorsal fin.

And I know you are asking why there are so many whales in Antarctica…well, it’s because it’s a great growing environment for phytoplankton, which feeds the zooplankton which feeds the krill, and everything in the sea eats krill.

And now to ice….

So what is a glacier? It’s dense ice with air confined to unconnected bubbles.

To form glacial ice, you need some snow to fall and it must survive summer ..as it gets compacted it gets more dense…about 20% air and 80% water. 

The second attribute of glaciers is that they move. They have three types of movement- basal sliding, bed deformation, and  internal deformation. And glaciers can be pretty old. The oldest ice outside Antarctica or the Arctic is around 30,000 years old at Mt Logan in Canada. Greenland ice cores go back 100, 000.  Antartica ice cores go back over 1.2  million years but the latest data from Allan Hills ice shows it could be 
6 million years old.

Tabular icebergs ( the one we saw yesterday) are the giants of the iceberg world and they only exist in Antarctica. They are so named because they have a tabletop.

Icebergs are named by US National Ice Centre  and in order to get a name, the iceberg must be at least 18.5 km long or  70 sq km

And for all my golfing readers, who says you can’t play golf aboard a ship!

And finally, enjoy some more Antarctica skies