10 April 2012 Pack Ice

Speed 6.3 knots
Course 189°
Location Erebus and Terror Gulf (-63.89313167, -56.49907333)
Depth 433 meters

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the PolarConnect event. For those of you who weren't able to participate, an archived version of the event will be on the PolarTREC website soon. If you really enjoy learning about polar science, Tim Spuck will be doing a PolarConnect Live Event on April 23 from Greenland where he will be studying ice sheets with NASA.

Pack Ice

We have slowly been heading north looking for ways to get out of the pack ice we have been in for a couple days. We aren't very close to shore right now, so when we look off the bow, we basically see a giant expanse of white. It almost looks like snow covered land.

Pack iceLarge pieces of floating ice driven together into a nearly continuous mass. is made up of sea ice and icebergs that have been packed together from currents and wind pushing them together. The ice is rather thick and the only way to get through it is to back up and ram into the ice over and over again. It's a tedious, noisy process and our progress is slow. The ice is broken into small pieces that are pushed to either side of the boat.

Every once in awhile, instead of just seeing white, there are some brownish colored blobs on the horizon. This always causes a bit of excitement since they aren't just blobs, but seals!

When the boat passes by, they usually try to scurry away as fast as they can (which isn't very fast and is actually quite comical). Sometimes they even strike a pose for the camera.