Paulet Island, Brown Bluff and the Weddell Sea
We woke to the magical world of the Weddell Sea. Last night, tested by a stiff gale, we crossed the Bransfield Strait from South Shetland and threaded the peninsula via Antarctic Sound. The latter is named after the 1903 Swedish Antarctic Expedition ship. In an adventure which was to foreshadow Shackleton’s epic tale of the loss of the Endurance, the Nordenskjöld ship Antarctic was trapped by ice in the Weddell, crushed like a matchbox and sunk, leaving the crew to fight their way across sea-ice to the nearest land, the peaked volcanic island of Paulet. This morning, negotiating shipwrecked icebergs, we were thrilled to reach Paulet, and went ashore in Zodiacs on the black cobble beach, drifted with snow. But this was no deserted island. The black dots on the snow-covered slopes turned out to be thousands and thousands of Adelie penguins, a teeming metropolis of birds. Not adults, but great gangs of pot-bellied chicks, a packed penguin kindergarten. The chicks were even sprawling over the old stone hut which was used by the survivors of the Antarctic shipwreck one hundred years ago. Can we imagine what it must have been like to survive a winter in this place? Their main source of food was the penguins and seals they were able to kill when they came ashore: within a month all the wildlife had left, but they survived a full frozen winter and were rescued.
In the afternoon we landed under the 2,000’ cliffs of Brown Bluff , a near-vertical wall of solidified lava capped with 700’ of ginger volcanic ash. Giant boulders lay strewn over the beach where they had fallen from the rotted battlements above. Pausing to watch Gentoos, Adelies and a lost Chinstrap, we clambered up over snow drifts to a giant boulder beneath which a tiny powder-puff Snow Petrel chick sat blinking at the reverent pilgrims who had come to pay homage. One lucky Zodiac group with Tom Smith saw a leopard seal in the sea, about to ambush the crowd of Adelies bunched nervously on the shore, putting off the plunge.
In the evening, Tom Ritchie called us out on deck as we came through Fridtjof Sound, to the spectacle of a vast flotilla of icebergs, the biggest a giant floating aircraft carrier of a berg over a mile and a half long. As we cruised under its blue-striped cliffs, tiny snow petrels soared above us. In a final flourish, the Captain took us on a daring dash down an “iceberg alley,” threading the tight gap between two giant tabular icebergs. Those on deck held their breath as we ran the narrowing canyon, then swept out between frozen portals where an ice cliff had collapsed only hours before. Phew! It is a thrill enough to be here in the land of Giant Icebergs, so we will happily decline the extended “Trapped in Ice” version of our expedition cruise.
We woke to the magical world of the Weddell Sea. Last night, tested by a stiff gale, we crossed the Bransfield Strait from South Shetland and threaded the peninsula via Antarctic Sound. The latter is named after the 1903 Swedish Antarctic Expedition ship. In an adventure which was to foreshadow Shackleton’s epic tale of the loss of the Endurance, the Nordenskjöld ship Antarctic was trapped by ice in the Weddell, crushed like a matchbox and sunk, leaving the crew to fight their way across sea-ice to the nearest land, the peaked volcanic island of Paulet. This morning, negotiating shipwrecked icebergs, we were thrilled to reach Paulet, and went ashore in Zodiacs on the black cobble beach, drifted with snow. But this was no deserted island. The black dots on the snow-covered slopes turned out to be thousands and thousands of Adelie penguins, a teeming metropolis of birds. Not adults, but great gangs of pot-bellied chicks, a packed penguin kindergarten. The chicks were even sprawling over the old stone hut which was used by the survivors of the Antarctic shipwreck one hundred years ago. Can we imagine what it must have been like to survive a winter in this place? Their main source of food was the penguins and seals they were able to kill when they came ashore: within a month all the wildlife had left, but they survived a full frozen winter and were rescued.
In the afternoon we landed under the 2,000’ cliffs of Brown Bluff , a near-vertical wall of solidified lava capped with 700’ of ginger volcanic ash. Giant boulders lay strewn over the beach where they had fallen from the rotted battlements above. Pausing to watch Gentoos, Adelies and a lost Chinstrap, we clambered up over snow drifts to a giant boulder beneath which a tiny powder-puff Snow Petrel chick sat blinking at the reverent pilgrims who had come to pay homage. One lucky Zodiac group with Tom Smith saw a leopard seal in the sea, about to ambush the crowd of Adelies bunched nervously on the shore, putting off the plunge.
In the evening, Tom Ritchie called us out on deck as we came through Fridtjof Sound, to the spectacle of a vast flotilla of icebergs, the biggest a giant floating aircraft carrier of a berg over a mile and a half long. As we cruised under its blue-striped cliffs, tiny snow petrels soared above us. In a final flourish, the Captain took us on a daring dash down an “iceberg alley,” threading the tight gap between two giant tabular icebergs. Those on deck held their breath as we ran the narrowing canyon, then swept out between frozen portals where an ice cliff had collapsed only hours before. Phew! It is a thrill enough to be here in the land of Giant Icebergs, so we will happily decline the extended “Trapped in Ice” version of our expedition cruise.
