Globetrotting travel and environment journalist, Mark Stratton set sail for the Weddell Sea in Antarctica in March. He recounts how best laid plans in the Great White Continent are only a guideline, and plan B can deliver unexpected wonders particularly late in the season.
“Sometimes you need a Plan B, C, D, or E, if Plan A fails,” said Ashley Perrin, expedition leader of my Weddell Sea voyage in Antarctica, onboard our state-of-the-art vessel, Sylvia Earle. Our expedition plan was to head into the infrequently visited Weddell, but before even arriving pack-ice was amassing near its entrance. The same icescape that crushed Shackleton’s vessel Endurance there back in 1915, seemingly awaited us. “We don’t want to get caught in that or we might end up stuck for months,” said Ashley. The Weddell Sea features in a minority of itineraries to the Antarctic Peninsula, because of the challenges of entering it. It’s a journey for connoisseurs of Antarctic polar exploration and for those who want to feel the pioneering uncertainty that explorers such as Shackleton felt.
The year previously I’d made it into the Weddell. Back then I’d seen tens of thousands Adelie penguins form krill-hunting groups so dense the ocean surface boiled. Driven by this sea’s powerful circulatory current, huge slabs of flat-topped tabular ice, some kilometres long, had broken away and were being shunted north. It made navigation down to the final destination of Snow Hill Island challenging – that’s as far as most ice-strengthened vessels can go. Snow Hill has a historic heritage site in the form of a black prefabricated hut built by Otto Nordenskjöld in 1902. This Swedish scientist had overwintered here for 2 years, his departure delayed by the sinking of the ship coming to relieve him. His eventual fortunate escape was due to rescue by an Argentine vessel called Uruguay.
Returning this summer, I wanted again to feel the Weddell Sea’s unpredictable wildness. Yet this time sea storms, and a barrier of shattered icefloe formed an impenetrate hurdle and our ship was beaten back. Plan B meant sailing around the northern top of the Antarctic Peninsula to its more visited western flank. It was late summer, and we were the last ship remaining in Antarctica.
The silver lining was we had extra time for the South Shetland Island which sit like a crown above the Antarctic Peninsula. Normally adventure cruises briefly call by this mountainous glaciated volcanic chain on the way back to South America. Seeking shelter from a storm, we harboured for a full day in Deception Island’s flooded caldera. Whalers Bay is a popular stop to explore the old legacy of a pernicious whaling industry characterised by rusting metal tanks that once were brim-full of whale oil along the bay’s shoreline. I smile at the irony of seeing Antarctic fur seals pressed up against them for warmth, when just a century before they would have been being slaughtered for their oil!
We also used the time to hike at Telefon Bay. The snowfall was heavy, and a short mountain hike revealed a monochrome black and white landscape, striping the beach’s strandline like a zebra’s hide. Next day, Ashley diverted us to what I would say is one of the greatest unknown natural wonders of the world – Edinburgh Hill off Livingston Island. Rising from the sea this is a jet-black mountain that during many visits to Antarctica I’d never heard of. Its form of hexagonal basalt columns flow in a sweeping, smooth symmetry, the façade reminding me of the baleen throat plates of a humpback whale.
Thereafter, with no chance of returning to the Weddell, we motored down to the western Antarctic into the Bellingshausen Sea. The fractured archipelago is sheltered from the elements, and being here so late in the season, proved a revelation. I was able to watch the start of the transition from summer to early winter. It was majestic and serene.
In a flurry of snowfall, despite it being a glorious blue-sky morning, I joined a zodiac dinghy ride for four-hours from Damoy Point where the season’s gentoo chicks were close to shedding their final down before fledging to sea. We rode down the ice-choked Peltier Channel through crystalline formations of early winter sea-ice, which lent the waves a plastic slow-motion quality, as platelets called pudding ice were beginning to lock together. The zigzagging ride took us to Port Lockroy, or the historic British Base A. I’ll confess it’s not my favourite place. The working British post-office draws in summer season crowds leaving a liquid slush around the building and possibly the grubbiest penguins in Antarctica. Now it was shut until next season and the fresh snowfall around the little wooden building was as enchanting as the gentoos were sparkling clean.
Back on the ship we eased our way through the fabulous Lemaire Channel, one of the narrowest gorges in Antarctica. It hadn’t received a cruise ship for days and throughout the channel, in the shadow of tall basaltic cliffs, humpback whales fed, perhaps a last krill banquet before migrating north to the mid-latitude to raise calves. Their long white flippers rowed beneath the surface like ghostly oars; sometimes their gaping mouths opened at 90º to gorge down the krill. As the humpbacks rose to the surface their rasping breath reverberated around the channel’s lofty walls. I’d craved to return to the Weddell, one of Antarctica’s most adventurous journeys. But by outrunning storms as winter began to close in on this frozen wilderness, an epic voyage had crystalised courtesy of those unplanned forces that historic explorers have experienced here since time and memorial.
Words and images by Mark Stratton
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