January 28 Approaching Russkaya

A pearly misty morning

We woke to a misty morning, the first since setting sail. It was quite magical but the mist burnt off by mid-morning which was probably good for sailing and enabled stunning wrap-around vistas. We were heading for Russkaya Station and there was quite a distance to cover before we would reach it but that time was well spent. Lectures plus! wonderful for geeky me.

A bit of geology of the Ross sea area where we were heading eventually 

The top image is simply a hand drawing of a time where a number of continents, once part of Gondwana, were still close-ish to what became what we now call Antarctica 100 or more million years ago. The circled bit is enlarged in the bottom image showing where Australia split off - almost creating the 'space' that became the Ross Sea. That is a hugely massive and probably fanciful generalisation with many steps in between but it might give you just an inkling of an idea of how the jigsaw puzzle may have fitted together once - the land masses have formed and reformed and travelled across the planet in a crazy dance for 100s of millennia. What the enlargement shows in paler blue is mostly ice - the Ross Sea iceshelf and other ice particularly surrounding the islands that make up western/Lesser Antarctica. The thick brown swathe through the centre is the Transantarctic Mountains, which I referred to before, leading to the Weddell Sea at the top of the image to the left of which is the Antarctic Peninsula. Sorry that may not be a good explanation I appreciate, but Antarctica is such an intriguing, complicated piece of our planet it's worth trying to understand a teensy bit more of its entirety rather than the small regions constantly reported about in the Media which is predominantly the Antarctic Peninsula some of which extends outside of the Antarctic Circle - it is the extension of the Andes before the Scotia tectonic plate took off east.  It is so complex and this is in part why I am so excited to be traveling to Antarctica - I'm trying to understand this astonishing place! Without any ice, what we 'see' as Antarctica would emerge as a giant peninsula/land mass and archipelago of mountainous islands, known as Lesser Antarctica, and a single large landmass about the size of Australia, known as Greater Antarctica. These regions have different geologies.

The miracle of life in the Ross Sea

As I was saying ..... we had a brilliant lecture on the geology, ecology and productivity of the Ross Sea, the world’s southernmost sea and coastline.  Our lecturer was a brilliant marine biologist Nic Servel, I won’t bore you with the details from his engaging lectures suffice it to say he had me totally engaged.  Oh OK! I might just tell you one little titbit.  Krill, wee crustaceans, teensy-weensy prawn-like creatures, are carbon pumps!  What? you say. I know they are often talked about as essential to saving the planet but perhaps plankton might beat them to that award for creating about 80% of our planet's oxygen - but Krill just might take the carbon stakes.  Anyway .... krill are very small but extremely numerous little creatures that are part of the Arctic and Antarctic food webs and are slurped up by whales and other sea mammals and birds.  The krill eat phytoplankton – microscopic plants that live by taking carbon out of the atmosphere and mixing it with sunlight and end up producing an estimated 80% of the earth's oxygen. When krill excrete (faeces) or moult their wee exoskeletons, those materials sink down in the ocean and the carbon in these little goodies is locked away in the deep sea. 

This might give you a laugh but probably won't surprise you - I, along with 3 other regulars plus Lindsay of course, sat in the front row of the theatre for every lecture - whoa betide anyone who sat in 'our' centre seats. It really was a bit funny, like school and it became a bit of a joke amongst some of the passengers but we were all eager beavers lapping up all they could tell us and there were some absolutely outstanding lectures. But it was not all 'intellectual', this morning we went straight from carbon pumps, inorganic nutrients, diatoms, silver fish (actual fish!) and krill to choux pastry in a few easy steps (just down the passageway) and voila! Such is life when we’re not out in zodiacs or walking on ice. Our clever Breton pastry chef, Alexandre shared his secrets on making a perfect dough for ‘choux’. It was fascinating to watch and the best part was eating what was made afterwards! 

No words required except to say this little sugary morsel was washed down with French cider!

I know this might sound a bit like - and then …. and then …. and then .... but I thought you might be interested to share a fairly typical day onboard. So …..  there's always breakfast with a sensational view at which we showed great restraint - usually, well me at least expect for the wee daily smoothie made with almond (or other nut milk) with all manner of different concoctions of fruit and/or vegetables. Absolutely delicious.  

This smoothy shot had beetroot in it plus plus today - yum

Today there was a waiter on duty who I hadn't seen before, John (there are two restaurants on board). He came up to me and said "Madam, do you know flowers grow in Antarctica?"  The lovely man handed me a flower made from a serviette (it's my grandmother image I think). I was so touched and talked to him about his skill. He then proceeded to make me an origami crane and so I told him what the Japanese paper crane represented - longevity, happiness, peace and good fortune.  FFWD to our second last day onboard he was in the restaurant again, I hadn't seen him since the flower gift and wanted to thank him and say adieu and the darling man made me wait while he made me an origami penguin to take home.  We had many beautiful staff taking care of us some of whom we ran into again at the airport in Christchurch. While we were queued in that seemingly endless check-in line I heard someone call "Madam Heather, Madam" and there was a string of them lining up to catch a plane home to Manila after 8 months onboard away from their families. Boy, they work so hard. We had quite a chat - surprise surprise! I know small things eh but it's the people who add that little je ne c'est quoi, n'est-ce pas? (indulge me we were on a French ship)

Breakfast was followed by the Ross Sea lecture and pastry fun (which I've told you about already). After lunch we were treated to another rather stunning lecture and slide show from Sue Flood sueflood.com who was one of Ponant's Photo ambassadors onboard. She is an award-winning photographer and filmmaker whose work continues to take her literally all over the world. She spent 11 years with the BBC Natural History Unit, working on series including The Blue Planet and Planet Earth as well as the Disneynature movie Earth with Sir David Attenborough. She showed us behind the scenes from some of those series and her experiences so you can imagine what a sensational show we were privy to.  She and her colleague Cindy were on board to help us with our photographic 'issues'.

But back to the start of this day when we were heading to Russkaya …. I know I do get diverted!  This is a former Soviet Antarctic research station built in the late 1970s. As far as our expedition leader, Florence Kuyper, was aware it was abandoned but she was reluctant to land there and explore without trying to contact them for permission to approach the Station. I’m not sure who she eventually got onto but she was told that it was a summer base (as it turns out however it was officially abandoned in 1990). When we got close it became apparent that landing and getting to the Station would be quite difficult as it was quite high on the rocky cape and a few Km in. So after we had a good look from onboard we sailed on.  In the meantime a long way out to sea we spotted a Chinese icebreaker. Our Captain radioed them as a courtesy. They were a bit evasive about what they were doing and where they were heading but evidently there’s a new base near there and they may have been supplying that.  It was all a bit mysterious!

Russkaya 'station' is high on that high on that hill (you need to zoom in). 

The day ended, well not actually ended but before cocktail hour at least! with a lecture rather enticingly entitled ‘Frozen South (Glacial and Land Ice)’ give by the ship's geologist, Dr Sue Currie. She was a bit of a hero for me as you can imagine.  She has a Doctoral degree in Geology from Cambridge and before choosing a life on expedition cruise ships as a geologist (what a perfect life), she worked as a geologist in the UK offshore oil and gas industry then as a senior geologist in the UK Govt Dept of Energy and Climate Change and served on the Fellowship and Validation Committee of the Geological Society of London. What credentials! I was quite in awe of her. Actually many of our guides and all of our lecturers came with pretty impressive backgrounds. You can imagine Sue’s lectures were riveting – I felt a bit like her groupie. Fortunately, she didn’t mind my flood of questions. I’ll tell you about that lecture next post (in case you want to skip it!!).