The Ross Ice Shelf

               

Penguins are very curious birds – one of the Adelies at Cape Bird seemed determined to come back to the ship after our visit – he jumped right out of the water onto the bow of Nigel’s zodiac.  He needed some encouragement to get back into the water, but was not content to stay there, as soon afterwards was seen jumping onto the bow of Mike’s zodiac!  It was the culmination of a great afternoon at Cape Bird, notwithstanding the big swell which had developed just as we were all trying to get into the zodiacs for the return to the ship.  I do believe some people were swamped!

A 2am wakeup call saw most of us up on the bridge (in broad daylight, or so it seemed) to view the immense Ross Ice Shelf.  It is the largest ice shelf in the world, bigger than France, about the size of Texas!  It floats!  The bridge is about 50 feet (20 metres) above sea level - where we first started cruising along, we were slightly above the level of the shelf, and it is very, very flat.  Moving deeper across the shelf, the height of the ice increased so that it was above the height of the ship!  So that means the shelf is up to 350 metres or 1,150 feet thick!!  You can imagine the explorers coming down into the Ross Sea, encountering the ice shelf, sailing for days along its margin trying to find a way through, and finally realising there wasn’t one! 

The captain has marked a new line on his map showing where the current line of the shelf is, which apparently is currently quite different from the original!

The Ross Ice Shelf is simply awesome!