February 22 Earth’s last frontier?

 

Cape Crozier is on the east is almost engulfed by the Ross Ice Shelf

Indeed it feels like the last frontier! This morning I woke with a sore throat, the result of spending too long out on the frozen deck last night -12c, so I stayed rugged up in our cabin for the morning. In the meantime, the ship ploughed on around Ross Island to Cape Crozier, the most eastern point of Ross Island, and then along the edge of the Ross Ice Self.  Fortunately, we had a front cabin so could watch out two windows – front and side. The captain sailed the ship so close, you felt you could almost reach out and touched the ice. It was a vast flat expanse of dazzling sparkling white, quite beautiful but terrifying in it unyielding front.

The edge of the Ice Shelf from the front window of our cabin

You can see where chunks of the ice shelf have calved off

The vastness of the continent has been sneaking up on me gradually as we have sailed down the western part of the Ross Sea as far as the Ross Island and the ice shelf.  Back in 1841 Sir James Clark Ross sailed along this huge wall of ice that we now know as the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf.  That shelf was formed by the convergence of numerous glaciers flowing seaward from the high ice plateau. Its age is unknown but supposedly the ice cap of East Antarctica reached its current expanse 6 million years ago and still continues to grow. The ice from that frozen plateau gives birth to great glaciers which push immense ice tongues many kilometres into the sea - the Drygalski Ice Tongue which we sailed past extends 80 km into the Ross Sea. On the western aspect of East Antarctica, these giant glaciers ‘squeeze’ between gaps in the high Transantarctic Mountain Range that divides the continent into two distinct geological regions, East and West. Geologically West Antarctic (which is in the east for us!) closely resembles the Andes Mountain range of South America. East Antarctica predates it with some rocks dating back more than 3 billion years, part of the earth’s old crust. 

But back to the Ross Sea .... it doesn’t look that big on a map but it is almost 1000 km across and covers an area of 960,000 square km. It’s coastline measures over 4,000 km.  It is home to ~40% of world’s Adelie penguins, a quarter of all Emperor penguins, 50% of the world’s Weddell seals and, among other species, it is home to over 2000 invertebrate species. The Ross Ice Shelf, home to one of the largest populations of Emperor penguins (20,000 pairs), has an area of over 500,000 sq km, twice the size of Victoria (about the size of France). It’s expansive and quite thick – towards the edge it is perhaps 300-500m thick but further south it is much thicker.

It is a phenomenal place, a wonderful sight but the temperature was dropping so we turned for north and more wonders.