Antarctica Flora and Cold Weather Gear

When landing on the Antarctic peninsula mainland at Admiral Brown Station, we saw our first glimpse of plants in 8 days.

Here is a British Antarctic Survey Overview of Plants in the Antarctic. They state that only 1% of the Antarctic mainland is available to plants.

 Here is what we saw.

 Lichen

Mosses and grass
The grass above is Antarctic hair grass Deschampsia antarctica.
The mosses could be Antarctic endemic moss Schistidium antarctici, and/or/either two co-occurring cosmopolitan species Ceratodon purpureus and Bryum pseudotriquetrum, but don't press me, I'm not a scientist, I only play one on TV. Further reading about Mosses here should you need a sleep aide. I left out the algae and liverworts, neither are my favorites, hence the omissions.

OK, now I got that over with, here are the cold weather clothes I took.

Antarctic Cold Weather Gear list, some items added/subtracted from the photo.

• waterproof and insulated snow pants
• fleece jacket
• down sweater
• fleece vest (not in photo)
• 2 hats with ear flaps (didn't lose one so didn't need the other)
• balaclava (did not use, except to craft a crazy hat) 
• 1 neck gator (wore every day)
• 3 pair long wool socks
• 3 pair medium wool socks
• 3 pair liner socks
• waterproof mittens with liners
• waterproof gloves (purchased after the photo taken)
• green wool liner gloves (did not use, were backups)
• silk glove liners (did not use)
• 4 pair thermal pants
• 4 pair thermal tops

My standard outing outfit consisted of; liner socks, 1 pair wool socks, thermal pants, waterproof pants, thermal top, fleece vest, down sweater, the Parka and the Muck boots loaned for the duration of the trip. The boots were very warm, I had brought a pair of fleece insoles to add comfort and warmth, probably not needed. Every day the temperature was around 32 degrees F. If the day was sunny I unzipped on land, if it was windy or overcast I stayed zipped up. I usually stayed zipped up when we cruised on the Zodiacs.

After adding clothes needed for the three weeks I had to use a larger suitcase than I usually take on vacations. On the ship we hand washed some items that were made of fast drying material and we also had some laundry done on board. Dress on the ship was casual, so wearing the same clothes more than once was not a big deal. I thought about taking fewer thermal pants and tops, but then I would have had to done more hand washing and I didn't think it made sense based on the weight/space savings.

Standard airline weight limit (before getting a tag of shame) is 50lbs/23kg and we both were close to these limits going South. Plus we knew we would have to pack a Parka on the way home, plus what ever other trinkets we would purchase. Just to add to our concerns, the domestic flight back from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires on Aerolíneas Argentinas had a 15Kg limit, less that the domestic flight going to Ushuaia, very odd. Ended up none of the airlines made a fuss about the weight, but someone did get a Tag of Shame returning from Buenos Aires. We'll put that down to a couple bottles of wine, a shared necessity.

Before departure my bag weighed in at 42lbs/19.5Kg, on the way back it was just under 50lbs/23Kg. The snow pants, gloves, mittens, hats, neck gator and fleece inserts alone weighed 6lbs.

Penquins

During one of the talks on our cruise given while crossing the Drake Passage, the Penguins we were expected to see were covered.

These included the 3 species included in the genus Pygoscelis commonly known as the Brush-tailed Penguins. The 3 included; Adélie - Pygoscelis adeliae, Gentoo - Pygoscelis papua and Chinstrap - Pygoscelis antarctica.
The diet of these penguins is mainly krill along with small fish and squid. All three types makes nests of small stones to keep their eggs and young dry and the female lays 2 eggs. We saw quite a bit of stone stealing going on. We were surprised at the variation in size of the chicks we saw within each colony.

 Adélie: These are the smallest of the Brush tailed group and found breeding the most southerly. These are the ones we first saw and my favorite.

 Alternative form of land transportation.

I'm imposing grander thoughts on this guy than is probably correct.

Penguin exiting the water, they pop out like Champagne corks.

Here is a "Waddle" of Penguins heading up to their Colony or Rookery off in the distance.

Another group heading back to the sea for food.

Gentoo: These are the third largest of the Penguins after the King and Emperor. As we traveled more north we started seeing these guys. Distinguished by the white on their heads and a red beak.

 A Penguin highway.

 Off on an adventure.

 British Gentoos at Port Lockroy. The Port Lockroy Base is on Goudier Island (64º49’S, 63º30’W) just off Wiencke Island in the Antarctic Peninsula. The Base is now a museum, gift shop and famous Post Office. It is run by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust by 4 volunteers selected from 5000 applicants. The 4 volunteers stay for 4 months, due to inclement weather they had not been able to land 12 ships during the first half of the 2016 Antarctic summer.

This base is on the Antarctic mainland. Can you guess whose base it is? All the Argentinian huts have giant Argentina flags either on the walls or roof.

We spent a lot of time just watching the interactions at the colonies, very interesting and entertaining. The Expedition staff were always available for questions.

Mothers and chicks

Nice comfy nest of stones.

Nests under the Port Lockroy base.

 Views out from the Port Lockroy base window.

Chinstrap:
These breed further north than the Gentoos, though it appears that the breeding territory of the Gentoos is spreading both south and north. We did not get very far north due to a bad storm hitting the South Shetland Islands, so we stayed in more sheltered waters.

 These guys sound a bit like gulls.

 A breeding colony.

 Large chick in the right third of the photo.

 Some chicks of various sizes here.

 The green on the snow is algae.

 This guy may not be sleeping, We were told Penguins are able to have half their brain sleep at a time. Uni-hemispheric sleep happens in animals when one side of the brain shows waking activity while the other side is asleep.

Emperor Penguin.
The staff did not expect to see these and everyone was surprised. These guys were molting, you can see the feathers on the snow in some of the photos.

From watching the movie,  The March of the Penguins, I know they breed in winter and have just one egg. The movie is worth watching.

Crossing the Antarctic Circle on the Ocean Diamond with Quark Expeditions

We left Ushuaia, Argentina (54.48S 68.18 W) at 6:30PM on Saturday, January 16, 2016 and crossed the Antarctic Circle 66.33 S on Tuesday, January 19 a distance of about 900 miles.

 Ushuaia, Fin del mundo, the End of the World, known as the most southernmost city in the world. Actually we saw a town further south when cruising the Beagle Channel on the Chilean side of the channel, don't know the population but maybe it was not large enough to count.

 View from our room of the dock of the very busy port. It was even more crowded on our return.

Our home for the duration. It was about the same size as the hotel room we had overnight in Ushuaia. There was plenty of storage in the closets across from the bathroom for clothes and rigid suitcases. The bathroom had plenty of shelves and contained storage to keep things from escaping when the ship was swaying.

Argentine side of the Beagle Channel on our journey south to open waters and the dreaded Drake Passage.

 The Ocean Diamond had an Open Bridge Policy, we were all allowed to visit he bridge any time unless the Pilot was guiding the ship to or from Ushuaia. We were surprised at some of the less than modern control panels.

We left the relative calm of the Beagle Channel sometime in the early morning hours of Sunday, January 17. We knew it, felt it and heard it, needless to say didn't get a lot of sleep that night. On the cruise down we had seas with 12 to 15 foot waves and winds of 40 MPH. We both used the patch and neither of us had any symptoms of seasickness.

 Now there was nothing to be seen off the Starboard side (right).

 And nothing off the Port side (left) either. By this time the waves were settling down, but the Drake Passage could not be called the Drake Lake (very calm passage) yet.

 Nothing ahead. It was like this for almost 2 days. On our first 2 days we were kept busy with getting kitted out with our boots and parkas and listening to lectures by marine biologists and having mandatory drills.

 January 18 we saw our first iceberg.

 On Tuesday, January 19 at 7:15 AM we crossed the Antarctic Circle. We had a visit from King Neptune who read a proclamation and was baptizing and tattooing (a rubber stamp of a trident) visitors to his icy realm and then we all toasted with champagne.

The plan was to have entered Marguerite Bay south of Adelaide Island and proceed north through Laubeuf Fjord then through the Gullet and explore on Zodiacs somewhere along the way,

but the bay was iced in.

Instead, our first Zodiac cruise was as close as we could get. It was a windy day and the seas were rough and there was plenty of salty sea spray to go around for everyone.

 Our first seals seen, Crab-eaters, though they don't really eat crabs, they mainly eat krill.

Our first Penguin seen, an Adélie, Pygoscelis adeliae, named by a French Explorer after his wife. No other birds are known to breed further south. Their main food source is also krill, but also eat squid and small fish.