December 28-29 Scotia Sea

 

We were crossing the Scotia Sea traveling to South Georgia. It was not rough but it was very grey and bleak. This morning we sailed alongside A-76A a simply enormous tabular iceberg which is around 135Km long and 26 Km wide. It broke off the world’s largest iceberg the A-76 which had broken off the western side of the Ronne-Filchner Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea in 2021. It was difficult to take in the size of this gargantuan block of ice which we reckoned was about 30m high which meant of course that there was considerably more/something like 300m below the sea. Hard to contemplate something so vast.

Antarctica's larger ice shelves

We were ‘fast’ approaching South Georgia so we had a mandatory briefing about biosafety before our landing after which we had to vacuum our gear to rid all those little creases and those nasty essential strips of velcro where seeds and invasive species might lurk. 

South Georgia, such an isolated island, was ‘discovered’ in the 1600s and with ‘white’ settlers came vermin and many invasive species which almost wiped out some of the native species of the island. Reindeer were also introduced for sport and meat. The degradation of the environment led to the establishment of the Habitat Restoration Project in 2018 headed by the Scottish and US which cost over $10 million. A group of Sammi, herders from Greenland, were brought in to get rid of the reindeer. Today the Trusts that look after the island are extremely cautious about people coming ashore – we had a lecture from one of their officers and inspections by both Government and local Trust people. 

To lighten the mood there is always food - afternoon tea was served each afternoon in the Citizen Science centre and each evening we were invited to sample the cocktail of the day.