Circling Deception Island

I woke up this morning to the rocking and rolling of the Mariner.  Looking at the clock it was only 6:30 am but something drew me to the window. Looking out I saw an iceberg that must have been at least 200 feet long and 50 feet high directly abeam our veranda about a mile out.  I took the picture above and went back to sleep.  Ho, Hum…just another morning in Antarctica.

We have been transiting the Drake Passage heading to Antarctic Peninsula.  We are planning on stopping just short of the Continent at Deception Island.  The ocean is quite rough with swells between 15-20 feet, breaking with feathery waves that are accented by 70 knot winds.  The ship is going quite slow, around 5-6 knots, the Captain is keeping us either directly into or with the wind directly at our stern — to try and give us the most comfortable ride possible.

Deception Island is a horseshow shaped island that has a story similar to Santorini.  In simple terms a volcano that blew its top, leaving a caldera that filled with water.  While it hasn’t seen any action lately it was particularly active in the 19th century and late 18th centuries and saw eruptions during two episodes this centur (1906-12 and 1967-70), resulting in the destruction of scientific stations on the island.  Come to think of it, that wasn’t all that long ago!  The island is famous for tourists swimming in the volcanically heated waters but, since we have a ship larger than 500 people, we cannot launch any zodiacs to go to the beaches.

There is an opening into which we are going to attempt entry if and when the weather and waves provide an opening.  For now we continue to pace back and forth expectantly.  They have locked many of the exit doors around the ship (they made an announcement that they didn’t want us on open decks — don’t want grandmother blown off the bow!) but later opened the doors off the Observation Lounge on the 12th floor.  Of course I took advantage to take still and video pictures of the icebergs floating by.

Apparently, there are penguins swimming by the ship but I haven’t seen any yet.  There are some sea birds that are flying near the ship.  They seem to enjoy flying low over the water and barely avoid hitting the waves as they break. We’ve heard about some whale sightings but we haven’t seen any yet.  I keep going out on our veranda — complete with my alpaca hat, gloves and jacket, but haven’t had any luck yet.

A few terms:

Berg – a smallish iceberg with less than 10 feet showing above the water.

Growler – an iceberg with more than 10 feet showing.  However, this is somewhat relative when there are some icebergs that are over 128 miles long!

Tabular – the type of icebergs that are broken off a large ice sheet or table.  A picture of one floating by our ship is below.  Terry Breen, our naturalist on the ship says that this one might be one  mile long and a hundred feet tall.

The captain gave up on getting into Deception Island’s bay so we have now gone by Livingston Island, turned the ship downwind and are heading back to Deception Island.  Along the way we went by a huge tabular iceberg of which I got some good still and video pictures.  At 4 pm we are off the coast of the island but the weather is still not good enough to head in.    We now have following seas so the boat is a bit smoother.

Final update: The weather never improved as we have an unusually static front overhead so we are going to head North to the Northernmost South Shetland Islands, the primary target being Elephant Island.  More on that tomorrow.

Deception Island Picture Gallery: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/South-America/Deception-Island-Feb-8-2010/25168670_rdLnck#!i=2064213376&k=npwC3TV

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