Friday, February 12, 2010

Between the icebergs

This afternoon we arrived at one of the shelf sites where we are going to drill for more Eocene: a time when it is believed there was no ice on Antarctica. On arrival we found that there is plenty of ice now. To reach the site we had to move around a cluster of icebergs. You could follow our curvy route on the monitors that are hanging around the ship that show the transit track. You can see the coastline of Antarctica as a white line below. I was in the galley eating my breakfast this morning when we went around a curve and the ship was leaning quite steeply. When we finally reached the site this afternoon, there was an iceberg sitting almost on top of it. We are now waiting for ice to move out of the way so we can drill. The icebergs were beautiful with nice blue ice. But: let's hope that they will be out of sight tomorrow when I wake up, so we can drill. It is getting colder already, now that autumn is setting in here. When we go outside we have to dress in warm clothes and even then the wind is very cold. We do not have much time left on the shelf before winter is setting in: the Antarctic summer is very short.

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