22 Jan 2018

SHO: Zodiac cruising amongst Icebergs

After three days of bumpy seas, we arrived off the ice edge at 11.30 pm Thursday. It had already been an interesting day with large numbers of Antarctic petrels, Snow Petrels and several Orca seen during the evening. We had hoped to sneak into Commonwealth Bay then on to Cape Denison, however, visibility was poor and we retreated with a new way-point west of the B09B berg that had arrived  from the Ross Sea a few years ago and making access difficult.

On Friday a new course was selected and by early afternoon we were enjoying bergy bits and small pieces of ice. Adelie penguins had hitched a ride on some of these and Snow Petrels kept us company. For much of the day there has been intermittent spells of fog, the air temperature has hovered around 2oC and the sea is now down to 0oC.

On Saturday we had a wonderful Zodiac cruise amongst ice floes and close viewings of Adelie penguins. Later when the sun came out numerous Snow petrels were seen catching small ice fish. Today we have enjoyed spectacular wildlife sightings as we cruised for nearly four hours along the ice edge. Light snow was falling and this did not prevent spending time on deck observing emperor and Adelie penguins, Orcas and numerous huge tabular icebergs each with their own features including the superb blues. Today being the 178th anniversary of the landing by D’Urville, it was appropriate that we left Australia’s Antarctic Territory and briefly entered Terre Adelie of France