April 11 - Passage through Neumayer Channel

April 11, 2014 ; 1:00 PM:  Icebergs Ahoy! Very exciting day! Early in the morning, the engine noise changed to a low hum and the rolling of the ship died down. I knew it meant something but I was too sleepy to climb down from my bunk and look out of the porthole. Finally got up around 7:30AM when my alarm went off, I looked out of the porthole see that one, there was no fog (yay!) and two, we were surrounded by snow-capped mountains! Rushed through breakfast, grabbed my camera and headed to the stern of the ship to get a good look. And what a sight! We were just entering the Neumayer Channel which is supposed to be the most beautiful passage to Palmer Station.   It is a narrow channel with incredible scenery: massive peaks up to 1500m topped with snow/ice up to 60 ft deep, large icebergs, glaciers and even ice caves!

Our path through Neumayer Channel

Entrance to the Neumayer Channel

A very interesting iceberg

A peak that looks like the  Kailash Parvat mountain in the Himalayas

Port Lockroy Station - A British survey station we saw from the ship.

Posing off the main top desk of the LMG

Mt. William on Anvers Island

2 PM : Arrived in the vicinity of Palmer Station but we will not dock there till 8 AM tomorrow morning. Plan is for the team for from Texas A&M to do their "Smith Grab" sediment collection for a few hours and then we start deploying tow net at around 8 PM to try and snag some pteropods. The towing will continue all night and we will stay up all night to collect and sort and store what we find.

Penguin Colony on Janus Island which is about a mile from Palmer Station - This was taken with the zoom from about 300m. Hope to Zodiac over to this island sometime during our stay at the Palmer and see the penguins up close.