You can sleep when your dead....
Monday 21 March
Again we get up early after the call on the ships audio system. Graham, our team leader wakes us up at 6h00 am with the words “Get up, you can sleep when you’re dead!”. Half an hour later we are on the top deck of the ship and we are looking at the rising sun coming up from behind the enormous tabular shaped icebergs in bright blue colors. It makes a stunning view. These icebergs came off the Larssen B ice shelf which broke off far sooner than any scientist anticipated. It happened in 2002 and signing the tipping point in the scientific arena on whether climate change was actually happening. I saw it with my own eyes and yes it is very real.
After breakfast we get out to the Zodiacs, again all layered up to keep us from getting cold. We set out to Brown Bluff in the Antarctic Sound. The Zodiacs land with the penguin and seals nearby. After a short walk on the black pebble beach, we get up the glacier about a mile or so. Cravats are a real danger here and we come across one which seems to have no end into the deepness. As far as I could look down, the cravat continued. It must have been 40 meters or more. From up the glacier, the views are stunning. Geologically this is also a very interesting place. The rock formations have light brown colors with dots of black basalt like a chocolate chip cookie. The brown colors come for the compressed asses that mixed with basalt in a volcano eruption which occurred under the ice. After hiking back and holding a real piece of ice in our hands we head back to the Zodiacs to take us back to the ship. One of the team crew, by the name of Jumper and a very experienced guy, gets in the water involuntarily because of the black rock formations just below the waterline. He actually was on the look out for these rock formations to avoid them, but given the lack of waves signaling where the rocks where and because of there black color the Zodiac softly run into one. Softly but enough to cause Jumper, who hanged already a little bit overboard to get a better view in the water, to go overboard. Jumper wears a floatation suite and is easily retrieved without getting cold. He actually runs two more transports of people from the pebble beach to the ship before getting off to look after himself.
During lunch the ship takes course towards the Weddell Sea, a place normally packed with ice around this time of the year but now it can be navigated by our ship. The number of icebergs we see is everywhere around us. Occasionally whale surface followed by their characteristic blow.
