Antarctica 2023

Way back in early 2019, GUE announced that they were organizing a trip to Antarctica, in February 2021.  Clinton, John, Rob, and I had been talking about figuring out a way to dive in Antarctica for several years, so when the announcement went out, we jumped on it right away and secured our spots on the boat.  Of course the 2021 trip was canceled due to COVID, and rescheduled for 2022.  We almost went in 2022, then the Omicron surge happened, and well, it was canceled again.  At long last, in January 2023, we had a trip that was NOT canceled, almost 4 years after we initially booked the trip!

It was a LONG trip, even though we were only in Antarctica for 5 days, I think the total trip was 16 days.  I was a bit nervous about leaving Pepper for so long, but luckily Kevin and Ted each agreed to stay at the house for a few days while we were gone, spaced out so that Pepper never had to go that long with just the cat-sitter (and of course Pepper was fine).

The play-by-play:

Getting to Ushuaia and Ushuaia

From Ushuaia to Antarctica

Day 1: Gerlache Strait, Orne Harbour

Day 2: Gerlache Strait, Cuverville Island, Danco Island

Day 3: Lemaire Channel, Port Charcot, Yalour Islands

Day 4: Foyn Harbour

Day 5: Deception Island

Back across the Drake Passage

Less than a Day in Buenos Aires

A Day(-ish) in Buenos Aires

Recoleta Cemetary

 Since we had to fly through Buenos Aires anyway, we decided to spend a day there on the way back instead of more time in Ushuaia.  We got there late at night and left in the early evening the next day.  So we had a morning and afternoon there, and no chance to eat dinner.  Since it was the summer, it was hot.  So I don't think it was a bad thing that we didn't get to stay longer.  We spend the day walking around a bit and visiting Recoleta Cemetary, a street market, and eating a little bit of street food.

The airport was kind of a nightmare, but on the plus side, once we finally managed to get checked in (the nightmarish part) and through security, they had a variety of tasty empanadas at the American lounge :)

Back across the Drake

The trip back across the Drake was definitely sportier than on the way south, though nothing too bad.  But the outside decks were closed for about a day and a half of the passage, and lots of people disappeared into their rooms because they were seasick.  On the worst night, it was a bit hard to sleep, just because of all of the movement -- I remember waking up in the middle of the night and feeling like I was swinging from head to toe.  It was also kind of annoying to get around the boat on one afternoon.  On Thursday, there were 4 lectures, all of which I attended — one I can’t remember (?), one on how whales play a role as “ecosystem engineers” (by moving nutrients from the deep to the surface, so phytoplankton can bloom), one on penguin evolution, and one on “human impacts on the polar regions”.  The last one was really more a presentation on how penguin populations have changed over the past 40 or so years, and then various conversation topics, including plastic pollution and cetacean entanglement/by-catch.  We also did a debrief on the diving operations with Faith.

I took no pictures of the scenery on the trip back (probably because the decks were closed for so much of it), but here is a nice picture of the last dinner aboard, which was kind of a fancy affair.

Antarctica 2023: Day 5: Deception Island

In the morning we went to Deception Island (in the Shetland Islands), which involved passing “Neptune’s Bellows” on the way in and out. We saw the bellows from our port holes but were too lazy to go out on deck that early in the morning to get a better view. Deception Island is sort of C-shaped, and you have to pass through this narrowing to get inside of the C and that’s where you land, dive, etc. The island used to be used by whalers for processing whales, and so it has a bunch of buildings/artifacts from that time, and tons of whale bones both on the beach and underwater. The interesting shape of the island/bay is because it is an old volcano caldera, so all of the sand and rock is volcanic. It’s the blackest black sand beach I’ve ever been to.

The dive was on a black sand slope and was advertised as a whale bone graveyard, or some such thing. There were indeed whale bones, but I would call this a muck dive, as there was also tons of life on the slope. There were (not too interesting) brittle stars and urchins all over the slope and the bones. But there were also lots of nice-looking anemones, star fish, more of those cream-colored dorids. And we found two of the giant sticky-footed (?) starfish, one of which was posing with several of its arms raised. Those things are so neat, even cooler than the sunflower stars (formerly) in Monterey! Clinton also found the first “big” fish that I’d seen on the trip, which was apparently an antarctic cod. Though I think it was way too cute to be a cod. Overall it was a very fun dive. When Clinton got cold and called the dive, we worked our way up the slope and finished in about 15 feet.

Afterward, we went to shore, where there were some chinstrap penguins right along the water. There were some buildings we could go and look at, but at the very opposite end of the beach was a southern elephant seal pup, so we made the long walk over to see him. We watched for quite a while, as the pup hung out on his back, in a pretty un-photogenic pose. Just as we were about to leave, he finally flopped over and did some cute things… like a big yawn, scratching his back, scratching his ankle, and also just looking at us.

We headed to Half Moon Island in the afternoon, which was a 4 hour motor from Deception Island. Unfortunately when we got there, there were 40+ knot winds and no place to put the boat so we could deploy the zodiacs. So after a bit of faffing around trying to make it work, we headed out of there and towards the Drake Passage.

Antarctica 2023: Day 4: Foyn Harbour

Tuesday was the first day that we had blue skies, but we were warned that with the blue skies we would get wind. In the morning, we went to Portal Point, but it was too rough to put the zodiacs in the water, so there was no landing or diving :(. Instead, we headed to Wilhelmina Bay to look for whales, which we saw quite a few of. There were a few small groups of humpback whales feeding and fluking, but nothing crazy interesting. It was really quite windy out on the deck watching the whales though.

In the afternoon we headed to Foyn Harbor, where there is a wreck of a whaling boat. It is half above water and half below. I was honestly not that excited about a wreck, but it was a pretty cool dive. There was a lot of encrusting life, like anemones and these yellow finger-shaped sponges, both on and around the wreck. I also found 4 slugs that I have yet to identify, that had this squiggly white pattern on their backs that reminded me of a lettuce sea slug.

When we surfaced, Rob stayed in the water to do some over-under, while the rest of us hung out on the boat. The weather was super nice — blue skies, very nice scenery around, and it was high 40s. Rob eventually got back in the boat, then after a little while he decided to get back in the water and snorkel with his camera. At some point we got word that there were 40 knot winds at the boat, so we couldn’t return just yet. Then shortly after that we were told we could in fact return to the boat when we wanted to. But it was a good excuse to stay out longer.

A few of the divers were agitating for a second dive on the wreck, and they managed to convince the powers that be to do it. I opted out, since at the moment I was told I needed to decide, I still could not feel all of my toes. In the end, it took a while for them to get off the boat, so maybe I could have done it. But the wind had kicked up and I think I was happy to stay on the big boat.

Antarctica 2023: Day 3: Lemaire Channel, Port Charcot, Yalour Islands

We were once again encouraged to get up early, this time to view the scenic motor through the Lemaire Channel, which is a narrow channel with lots of icebergs and snow-covered mountains along each side of the channel. It was unfortunately raining, but it was indeed quite scenic. So I went out and stood on deck to watch for a while in the rain. Eventually we got to Port Charcot, where we spent the morning.

Our first dive was another iceberg dive, this time on a grounded iceberg. We were diving with Clinton and Sergio, and Rob and Clinton were hoping to get pictures of each other. We descended properly (following down the ice down), and went down to around 60 feet where we hung out for much of the dive. Rob and Clinton both did well getting pictures of each other! There were some really neat overhangs that I spent some time posing under. We went down to 80 feet at some point and still could not see the bottom of the iceberg. We eventually headed up to 40 feet but after not terribly long there, Clinton and Sergio headed up and we followed them up shortly after that, for an approximately 25 minute dive. My hands were just too cold!

There was a leopard seal on the dive that several teams saw zooming by around 10 feet. But of course we missed it :(

We went to shore after the dive, and this time we climbed up the snow a bit to look at the penguins. Still no babies.

In the afternoon, we moved to the Yalour Islands. There were a lot of icebergs nearby, so we thought we’d dive one of them, but they weren’t stable enough, so we ended up diving along a spit of rock that ran across from a small channel from the island we were landing on. There was a seal perched on top of the ridge, so we were hoping for some seal action. The site was sort of boring, but we had a fun dive anyway. There was a slope consisting of small boulders that were mostly scrubbed clean but had some kelp, lots of limpets, and the occasional colorful sponge or starfish. We found a giant isopod and played with him for a while. One interesting thing that happened on the dive was right after we dropped down, Rob pointed behind me and there was a small round-looking iceberg drifting along. It was cool and terrifying at the same time.

We once again went to shore after the dive and this was our best landing yet. There were tons of Adélie penguins, in many different colonies, and several were sitting on their chicks! There was a little path in a loop that was marked that you could walk along and see all of the groups of penguins. The chicks were very cute, but the adult penguins were doing all kinds of funny things too, like sliding across the snow on their tummies, or just waddle running across the path. There were views on both sides of the island that were really good too. I almost didn’t go to shore after the dive because I was so cold, but I’m glad I was talked into going by Rob!

Antarctica 2023: Day 2: Gerlache Strait, Cuverville Island, Danco Island

In the morning, we went to Cuverville Island, where we did a dive on a wall.  When we first dropped down, it didn’t seem too wall-ish and more of a pebbly slope but after not too long we found ourselves on a wall that was quite impressively vertical.  It had this kelp that came in these huge sheets cascading down the wall.  Quite different from any kind of kelp that I’ve seen before.  Aside from the kelp, there was various encrusting life on the wall, and some interesting bigger colorful sponges in orange and yellow.  We started the dive with John and Clinton but eventually got separated by the bad viz — it was maybe 15 to 20 feet, though it was bright and blue, just milky.  That’s too bad, since Clinton found some neat looking big dorids.  We managed to make it to 40 minutes.  I was about to thumb it based on cold hands when Rob thumbed it on gas (he was quite the hoover on this dive).

After the dive, we went to shore.  There was a pebbly beach that had penguins hanging out on it and going in and out of the water and up and down the snow slope above the beach.  I hung out on the beach and briefly got into the water (Rob was trying to do over/unders and shallow water photos with his camera in its housing).  After entertaining ourselves with the penguins for a little while, we headed back to the boat.

In the afternoon, we dove on an iceberg, which was way cooler than the previous dives, and way more “Antarctica”.  We made a small mistake when we started the dive, by dropping down and swimming toward the iceberg, rather than swimming over to it and following it down.  As a result, we didn’t make it to the iceberg until 50 or 60 feet, and the viz was pretty bad.  We saw several interesting jelly critters right at the start of the dive, and then, just like that, I was separated from Rob.  I think I may have gotten sucked a few feet shallower by the halocline.  Then I looked up and saw an overhang above me.  So I swam out from under it and then I was in blue water, with no iceberg or buddies in sight.  I figured it was pretty hopeless, but did the “search for 1 minute” thing before doing an ascent.  I came to the surface right next to an iceberg.  Henrik saw me and motored over and just as he was coming to me, Rob surfaced, next to a different iceberg.  That was the one we were supposed to be on — I had drifted over to the next one.  So Henrik gave me a fairly painful and terrifying tow back over to where Rob was.  

We reunited and headed down, this time following the ice down to about 30 feet.  The water was much clearer there and we had a ton of fun playing with the ice!  It had this cool scalloped texture that reminded me of certain Florida caves, like Indian.  And touching it was really neat, because it looks like snow but feels like ice.  Only a few spots are clear like ice.  Anyway, it was super fun and really neat, despite the dramatic start to the dive.  We did about 35 minutes, and I didn’t even check the temperature during the dive, because I was so entertained by the ice.

We went to shore again, and once again we just hung out near the beach, while a few others hiked up the slope.  Rob had packed his land camera in a dry bag for the landing, so he was taking pictures of penguins.  I didn’t want to get sweaty in my drysuit, so we just hung around on the beach, where there were lots of penguins.  Just before we got in the zodiac to head back to the ship, they started the polar plunge.  Brrrr.