Day 1- Friday January 6
Headed to the Falkland Islands
Today is my first whole day at sea. We took off from Ushuaia which is in Argentina and is the southernmost city in the world. Yesterday we got on our ship the Explorer II, and my brother Luke and I explored it top to bottom.
Today we saw pilot whales surfacing! We've also seen black browed albatross and giant petrels following our ship. You can see pictures of them here.
Luke, our friend Philip, and I started our GLOBE project today. GLOBE is a worldwide science and education program where students and scientists investigate the environment together. This project includes our making measurements of air and water and filming each other while doing it. This will become a virtual field trip experience for kids. Today we just made a tour around the ship using the camera. It was so windy out here that you could lean back in the wind and not fall over. Later on, the winds gusted up to 58 knots, a Beaufort 11 and near gale conditions.
That's all for today.
Bye,
Jamie
Day 2 - Saturday January 7
Falkland Islands
We got off our ship and rode a bus to the town of Port Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands. We arrived at the Visitors Center and walked to a restaurant for lunch. There is a tradition that you have fish and chips and that's what we ate!
That afternoon we got on the tour bus and went to visit the Long Island Farm. We watched peat get cut (peat is dried grass and moss that has been in the ground a long time.) I got to cut some myself. Then we watched a sheep get sheared and I got to pick which sheep. We also watched sheep dogs herd the sheep, and we played with the dogs (my favorite part!). Since the islands are a British Colony we went inside the farm house and had the traditional afternoon tea with the family that lived on the farm. They had good cookies.
After we had pulled up along a ship to get fuel, which is called bunkering, we set sail late that night for Antarctica.
Day 3 - Sunday January 8
En route to Antarctica
Three words describe my day: Dramamine, sleep, and bed! We have been crossing the Drake Passage and the seas were rough. The captain said there were swells as big as 18 feet. (Read more about the Drake Passage, named for Sir Francis Drake). I laid in bed and watched movies and lectures about Antarctica. My favorite lecture was about plate tectonics and the forces that put Antarctica at the bottom of the planet. We also heard all about the history of Antarctica exploration and my dad, who's a marine biologist, told us about the whales, dolphins, and seals we might see on our trip. (See highlights of my Dad's lecture.)
By the afternoon the seas had started to calm down.
I wanted to tell you that I met a girl, Augustina, on the ship. She speaks mostly Spanish but some English. Talking with her was difficult but we managed with help from people who speak both languages. Meet Augustina here.
Last night we started to cross the Antarctic Convergence. That is where the water gets a whole lot colder. It's the spot where the cold water flowing north from Antarctica meets the warmer water flowing south to Antarctica.
That's all for now.
Day 4 - Monday January 9
At Sea
Today was a sea day. A sea day is a day where you spend the whole day not getting off the ship. My brother, Luke, and I slept in very late. When we finally woke up the seas were calm. We worked on our GLOBE project today. We went up to the bridge and got a water sample off the side of the ship. We took the temperature, salinity, density, and other measurements. We also looked at cloud charts and air temperature. See some of our GLOBE action.
Later we saw fin whales surfacing and spouting in the distance. They are the second largest animals in the world and are very, very fast swimmers.
Then we listened to my dad's lecture about scuba diving in Antarctica and the life on the sea floor. See his project's most recent UAB in Antarctica website for lots more information and cool pictures.
There are people from a lot of different places on the ship -USA, Australia, New Zealand, England, the Philippines, Argentina and South Africa. Antarctica is for all people of the world. It is referred to as a world continent - no national claims are recognized and it is reserved for science and exploration.
Tomorrow we arrive in Antarctica and I get to see my first PENGUIN!!!!!
That's all for now.
Day 5 - Tuesday January 10
Visit to Brown Bluff and Argentinean Base
This morning we woke up at 4 in the morning and looked out our window to see icebergs and penguins! The penguins were swimming and the icebergs, which were the tabular, flat-topped kind, were huge. At 9 am we boarded the zodiac boats and went to the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula at Brown Bluff.
It was a wet landing, meaning that we got out of the Zodiac and stepped into the water and walked to the shore. It was amazing. There were penguin rookeries with thousands of adelie and gentoo chicks and adults and you could smell them from far away. I got about two feet away from a penguin by kneeling down and having it come up to me. Look at some of the sights I saw this morning.
This afternoon we got on a zodiac boat again and went to Hope Bay and saw an Antarctic Argentinean Base called Esperanza. There we saw many more adelie penguins (more that 200,000). Also there is a school and housing. The school is even a GLOBE school but they were on vacation because it's summer here. They showed us a historic hut made out of rocks that early Swedish explorers spent a whole winter in. We went in a dining hall building and had little doughnuts and drinks.
This evening the seas are calm and the icebergs are amazing. It was our first day at Antarctica and it was GREAT. See for yourself...
Day 6 Wednesday January 11
Visit to Half Moon Bay and Deception Island
Today we arrived at Half Moon Bay. We got in the zodiac boats and rode to shore. It was beautiful. It was very rocky and we did a lot of walking. I actually lost my sun glasses and had to find them because it is against the law to leave anything on Antarctica (according to the environmental regulations governing cruise ship activity).
The penguins that we saw at Half Moon Bay were chinstrap penguins. They are easy to identify because they have a black stripe across the chin area. Now we have seen three species of penguins. There were chinstrap penguins on the beach. They were very playful and they had chicks. We also saw our first leopard seal today. It was a baby, about two years old. It was up on the snow and we got really close. We also saw weddell seals on the rocks and in the water. Look at my wonderful morning .
Later in the afternoon we went to Deception Island . This is not really an island, but it is an active volcano with a flooded volcanic crater called a caldera. We walked on the shore for about a mile to Neptune's Window. I think someone has an obsession with Neptune. Neptune's Window is like a square in a side of the cliff. Looking over the cliff you could see the tip of the Antarctica Peninsula. It was worth the long walk. We were so busy we didn't have time to look at the old whaling station but other people did and shared these pictures with me.
At about 6:30 PM we got back in the zodiacs and went back to the shore of Deception Island to a place called Pendulum Cove. We were wearing bathing suits under our clothes. We got onto shore and took off our coats and pants and boots and hopped in the water. It wasn't as cold as you might think because we were in the middle of an active volcano, but the wind made it cold. The sand was warm and you could dig into the sand and feel how warm it was, but the water was cold. I think the water was about 50 degrees...brrrr....
Day 7 Thursday January 12
Neko Harbor and Paradise Bay
This morning we got up, ate breakfast, and got in the zodiacs. We rode to the shore of Neko Harbor. There we hiked up a big snow slope that was actually part of a gigantic glacier and looked at the view from the top. We saw the ocean and lots of icebergs. Then we hiked down about half way and slid down the ice. There was a big drop off that nobody knew was there except the guide. We weren't expecting it when we slid down. It was a lot of fun and we went really fast. Look at how steep the slide was.
We saw gentoo penguins and weddell seals. The weddell seals were really big and there were two of them. The gentoo penguins had chicks and they were really small.
That afternoon we got in a zodiac and my dad was the driver. We took a tour around Paradise Bay in the zodiac. We saw blue-eyed shags with chicks, crabeater seals, and minke whales . The coolest thing I saw today was an albino-like gentoo penguin. It was all white. A staff member said in a million penguins you might find one like that. Somebody asked if the penguins would treat it the same, and the answer was yes. The penguins treat it like every other penguin.
Have a look at cool images of today.
This evening we went through the Lemaire Channel, our southernmost point of the trip. It was incredibly narrow with huge icy cliffs and we had to navigate around icebergs.
Tomorrow we will be at Palmer Station where my dad does research.
That's all for now!
Day 8 - Friday January 13
Torgersen Island and Palmer Station
This morning - as yesterday- we woke up, ate breakfast, and got in the zodiacs. This will be my last day on the White Continent, and then I will be heading back to Ushuaia for a flight back to Santiago, then to Atlanta and then to Birmingham.
We went out again on the zodiac and rode to Torgersen Island where I was able to see more than twenty elephant seals and one leopard seal. The elephant seals were big and they smelled. We actually saw two elephant seals fighting and making this very odd sound that they had a special gland for. We also saw a blue-eyed shag colony and watched a giant petrel drag a penguin chick to the edge of the colony and have it for lunch.
We rode on to Palmer Station, one of That's all for now.
Day 9 - Saturday January 14
Back at Sea
This morning there were three orcas seen again from the ship. It was a mom, a dad, and a baby. Dad had the tallest dorsal fin.
We're heading back to the Drake Passage again and tomorrow will be our last day at sea. My dad gave a lecture on how some of the chemicals that marine organisms use to defend themselves may also actually help humans treat diseases. He recently talked about this on CNN. We also heard about how albatrosses are getting caught up in fishing nets and are becoming endangered. We heard all about the ice ages in our planet's history and about the changes in global climate. Look here for more on climate change.
That's all for now.
Day 10 - Sunday January 15
Drake Passage and Homeward Bound
This morning when I woke up there were calmer seas and we were getting close to the Ushuaia Harbor. Today we did more on our GLOBE project. I also interviewed Patricia, an ornithologist from Argentina. We talked a lot about what it's like to work in Antarctica and how she decided to become an ornithologist. Read on for details....
The rest of the day I played with Augustina. She is 12 years old and speaks mostly Spanish. We played Scrabble and ping pong. That day after lunch they had a Chocolate Buffet! Augustina and I ate tons of chocolate. That night Augustina helped me with my Spanish and I helped her with English. She had a little picture dictionary and I was using one from the library.
Tomorrow we fly home and the next day I will be back at school.
It was such a GREAT trip!
I am thrilled to be a real Antarctic Explorer!