The next day the ship remained most of the day on the ice floe so people got to really enjoy the experience of being at the North Pole – skiing and hiking as well as a second polar plunge for some. It took some time to dig through the ice sufficient for people to drop into water. Santa made a surprise visit entertaining everyone and there was a mail box set up to ‘post’ cards to family.
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| Digging the plunge pool |
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| Santa |
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| Some of the survival equipment - a tent stocked with food and water |
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| The land and water rescue vehicle and tent |
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| The polar plunge site |
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| A demonstration of an immersion suit |
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| Two scientists dived under the ice to test breathing equipment |
The next few days we felt a little sad as we navigated south from the North Pole but the ice and the skies were spectacular. We were surrounded by pack ice – some new ice some multi year ice. The patterns were fascinating and even the changing colours held me spell bound . Having spent the last 10 days navigating through sea ice, I’m curious about this amazing phenomenon. This is what I have managed to learn - and I don’t claim to have much of a handle on it but it’s a start. Unlike the Inuit, the Sami and other people who live with ice and snow, we seem to have only a handful of terms to describe ice but it’s worth listing them. Incidentally September is the month for the birth of sea ice and we have see a huge amount on this trip.
Baby ice is called frazil and is just a collection of ice crystals. With the fusion of ice crystals, you get such delights as sorbet (basically ice soup), slush and shuga.
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| Grease ice |
Grease ice which forms in calm conditions and appears, as the name suggests, like an oily film on the surface of the water. Then there’s nilas which is a thin and elastic layer of ice which often forms fingers or rectangles. This can be very thin grey ice 0-5cm or thicker 5-10cm and is white; wind and waves impact on this of course.
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| Nilas ice |
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| Nilas |
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| Pancake |
Pancake ice is grease ice that is affected by swells and breaks into small pieces; colliding with other pieces makes them ‘round’. Young ice can be 10 to 30cm thick; the thinner ice is grey and the thicker say 15-30cm thick is white.
My favourite is the ‘frost flowers’ which form on grease ice in dry conditions on a thin sheet of water over the grease ice. These decorative dainties are more salty than the sea water and provide a micro-bacterial ecosystem.
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| Frost flowers |
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| Frost flowers |
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| Flowers up close (not my photo) |
I have also been looking out for evidence of diatoms that sometimes appear as golden smudges under the ice - and I’m happy to say I have seen some on the underside of overturned ice. These organisms make up a significant portion of the Earth's biomass and generate about 20 to 50 percent of the world’s oxygen as well as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. On top of that they are a primary food source for higher organisms in the food chain, such as invertebrates and small fish. If we want to talk about world super powers, I’d say these should get Gold!
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| Those pale smudges in the overturned ice are diatoms |
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