Wandering Albatross on the Crossing

The Wandering Albatross has the greatest know wingspan of any bird on the planet, between 8 and 12 feet across. They look large and have a tell tale pink patch behind their eye. Here is a size comparison with a Black Browed Albatross (left) which is also a formidably sized bird. 

These birds can glide on the winds around the southern ocean for years at a time, not uncommonly circumnavigating Antarctica three times in a year. 

Many sea birds follow what is called ""the convergence" where the southern ocean current grates against the currents from the rest of the worlds oceans. This mixing line often has great upwellings of nutrient rich water for the birds to follow in circles around Antarctica. 

Magnificent wings. Also check out the tiny bird in the bottom right, it's hard to get perspective on the open ocean. 
 

2020 Eclipse

We had a partial solar eclipse on December 14th and it thankfully wasn't cloudy! I set up a pinhole box and welding glasses for people to safely view the event. 

Even the sheathbills came to check out what we were up to.

 

Bergs and Mountains on the way down

I stayed up most of the night taking photos on the last day of the voyage South. The weather was clear and the light was wonderful. 

After going to bed for a nap at around two I woke up again at four to take more photos of the Neumeyer channel before making the turn around the south end of Anvers island. 

The mountain in the middle is William, it is 5249' high.

Interesting mineral deposits in the cliffs.

A fun ice berg.

Must be windy up there.

More colorful cliffs. 

The Seven Sisters of Fief, first fully traversed in 2019 by a small group based of a tiny sail boat. 

William from a different angle. 

Cool clouds developing over William as we head further south to make our westerly turn around Anvers.

One more neat berg.
 

A Longer Migration South

After a short summer, it's time to go back to work. This year the deployment process was very different and much longer to keep everyone healthy and to ensure that Antarctica would remain COVID free.

Here is the view from my hotel room in San Francisco for the two week quarantine before flight down to Punta Arenas. 

Thankfully everyone tested negative (twice) so we were able to get on the charter flight in San Francisco. 

There were just over 30 of us on the 24 hour journey from SFO to somewhere in Texas and then all the way down to Punta Arenas. 

Our charter flight safely on the ground in PA. We were the only flight in the PA airport and they had customs set up just for us. Very quick process and then onto the bus to go directly to the pier and the waiting vessel.

All bags were cleaned on our way on to the ship. Then we sat in port for two weeks, just to be extra safe.

Neat clouds, good weather. Did lots of laps walking in circles around the ship. 

Thanksgiving on the vessel was a nice meal but a fairly low key event. 

Four weeks since departing home, we finally get underway, right into some pretty rough weather. We exited the straights of Magellan to the west instead of the normal east route, because the Chilean pilot would only have to come on board for one hour instead of 12 hours. 

Last spit of land before we hit the pacific ocean, weather was not great. Seas picked up quickly and everyone hunkered down. We had to head pretty far out into the Pacific to make sure we hit the swells in a less terrible direction. 

Green is the route that was plotted, the red is what we actually did.  

Land ho! Calm waters at last! This is the first land (Smith Island) we saw after crossing the Drake. This is the same route the Amundsen took when he headed south to start his journey to the South Pole.

Entering the Gerlache Straight at around 2 AM. 

This is about as dark as it gets here this time of year.

Beautiful day for passing through the Neumeyer channel. 

Little berg was almost in the way of our parking spot.