A Ghost of Christmas Past

With a full 12 hours on a National Express Coach in prospect today, we'll take another look back through the archive, this time to Christmas/New Year 2007/2008. During this period I was on a sea-going expedition from Ushuaia, Southern Argentina, visiting many of the South Atlantic Islands and landing on mainland Antarctica as well. I am occasionally asked which has been the best of my many travels and this was singularly it!

Icebergs come in various shapes and sizes, this one was just 28 miles long.

Having spent the first year of my sea-going career on a ship mainly deployed inside the Arctic Circle, I became familiar with many of the terms associated with ice formations. This is what would be described as a Bergy Bit, a small iceberg in the latter stages of melting and rising between 1-4 meters / 3-13 feet out of the water.

A Growler on the other hand is a very small chunk of floating ice that rise only about 1 meter / 3 feet out of the water. When trapped air escapes as the iceberg melts it sometimes makes a sound like the growl of an animal, and that's how growlers got their name. Both are extremely dangerous to shipping,

but one mans danger maybe a Penguins sanctuary.

The thankfully redundant Whaling Station at Grytviken on the Island of South Georgia was a grizzly reminder of how thousands of these magnificent beasts met their end.

More Bergs.

Black-browed Albatross Colony.

and more Penguins.

King George Island, Antarctica.

The Ice Man takes a rest on arrival on Mainland Antarctica.

The Stern Trawler Saga Sea fishing mid-water for Krill. My view? Keep ALL industries out of these ares, I think we may have been looking at the thin edge of an extremely large wedge.

A couple more images across the Antarctic Ocean,

and a video