Sea Ice, Sun and Animals

Some photos of the Sea Ice and Sun during the trip. And a few animals too.

We had open ocean for the first 1.5 days out of Dutch Harbor. SW of St. Paul Island we started seeing the first bits of sea ice.

To the left of center you can just make out the swell passing thru the ice. Depending on how strong the swell is you have to travel 10 miles or more into the ice before the swell is no longer noticeable.

Ice floes in the sunlight.

Ice floes on a steel blue day.

Grease Ice. Its amazing how the ice smooths out the choppy water so quickly.

Small pancakes frozen together.

More grease ice.

Smaller chunks washed up on larger floes by waves washing over the ice.

Looking down at the very front of the bow.

The ship backing away from thick ice with a heavy layer of snow. The more snow the worse the friction along the underside of the ship. To break the ice the shallow drafting and rounded bow rides up and over the ice/snow and as the ship progresses the weight of the ship pushes the ice/snow down and under the ice along the side of the ship. The ship shakes and rattles as it goes thru the ice. Occasionally a large chunk gets hit by one of the two propellers and the whole ship shudders even worse.
We were breaking 3 feet of ice at 5 knots or a foot of ice at 10 knots.

Some photos of finger rafting. The wind or currents cause this. The ice has to be just thin enough for it to "tear"and not just crumple or fold into a mess. So either two seperate sheets of ice come together or a solid sheet get pressed around its edges by larger floes and the thinner sheet begins to relieve the pressure by alternately subducting and overriding itself or the the thin floe colliding with it. I've been reading that this phenomenon is not special to ice. Thin sheets of was floating on water have done the same thing when pushed into one another.
This from Sciencedaily.com:

"We show that this striking observation is a general and robust mechanical phenomenon that we can reproduce in the laboratory with floating materials other than ice," he said. "Our experimental results were consistent with the field observations."

According to Wettlaufer, the findings are relevant for a host of physical systems and, "The same principles might be used for designing nanomachine gears from appropriate materials." He points out that Tuzo Wilson, one of the founders of the theory of plate tectonics, was inspired by the resemblance of structures on floating polar ice sheets to the transform faults and other features of the Earth's moving plates."

A large finger raft.

Jumbled ice when thicker floes collide.

Open lead in very thin ice looks like a stream of water in the morning.

High cliffs of St. Matthew Is. in the distance, left of center. Very jumbled ice.

The view from the Alotf-con, 99 feet above the ice. It was so cool to watch cracks in the ice form as the ship pushed ahead. The cracks would travel really quickly but if you concentrated you watch it propagate as it traveled forward.

Large sheets of ice begin to form ice ridges when the wind/currents move them around and the sheets cannot handle the stress.

This was a neat scene, a thin layer of new ice with small areas of open water catching the wind.

Slushy ice pushed together by the wind forms bands.

Pancakes of ice surrounded by slush.

An amazing morning. It was a cold morning with a haze of ice crystals near the water surface causing the brilliant sundogs. As the sun rose the sundogs became taller and taller.

Here is a movie of the ocean swell passing thru the ice. It is a surreal experience. Photos don't capture the swell in the ice very well. This poor quality video barely captures it. Click on the "Play" symbol to watch it.

These photos were taken by Liz Lubunski, a mammal observer with US Fish and Wildlife out of Anchorage. A Spotted Seal here.

A beautiful Ribbon Seal.

A Bearded Seal

A Spotted Seal with her pup.



Two Walrus I got to see for about 30 seconds before the slid into the water. I'd never seen one in the wild before.