The Polar World
We sailed south throughout the night and very early this morning, we crossed the Antarctic Circle…something that very few people ever get the chance to do. It is a latitudinal line that encircles the globe precisely at 66° 33' 39" S latitude, although it does change very slightly through time. The Antarctic Circle is defined by a very real natural phenomenon. The Earth is tilted on its rotational axis at the moment by precisely 23° 26' 21" (or 23.44°) relative to the perpendicular plane of its ecliptic orbit around the sun. On the day of the Austral Summer Solstice (which is usually on December 21st), the South Rotational Pole is tilted towards the Sun at its maximum position. Therefore, a person located anywhere less than 23.44° from the South Pole during the Austral Summer Solstice would be able to see the sun continuously for 24 hours…as the Earth makes one complete rotation. The latitudinal position that corresponds to 23.44° from the South Rotational Pole is 66.56° S, which can also be written as 66° 33' 39" S. The exact same phenomenon holds true for the northern hemisphere, but occurs exactly six months later. Therefore, the Antarctic and Arctic Circles demarcate the territories that experience at least one complete day of direct sunlight during the summer, and conversely at least one complete day of no direct sunlight during winter, each year. Of course, the closer one is to the rotational pole during the Austral Summer, the more days of total sunlight one enjoys.
It became a day of exploration that held lots of wonderful surprises for us. Calm waters, that were surprisingly clear of ice, allowed us to make our way very far south during the day. We decided to stop within the very protected, narrow waterway known as The Gullet and launch our Zodiacs and kayaks. The snow-covered mountains, ice caps, and glaciers which surround the site provided spectacular scenery as we observed many crabeater seals lounging on floating pieces of ice, as well as an impressive lone leopard seal (see image above left). There were many comments about the rather cold, reptilian demeanor of this large, powerful predator that stared at us in our little rubber boats.
Once we had everyone back aboard, we continued even farther southward. Soon, the call came out that there were killer whales ahead of the ship! It seemed nearly everyone came out onto the Foredeck to enjoy what turned into a very exciting experience. As we neared the killer whales, they turned around and came right over to our ship for a very close encounter as they checked us out (see image above right). The small pod of seven animals seemed quite interested in us and remained with the ship for about a half hour before they eventually moved off.
We then continued on to 67° 14' 20" S (67° 14.3' S) latitude…our farthest south position of the voyage. As we retraced our route northward, we came upon the same pod of killer whales again and watched them carefully check out several crabeater seals on half a dozen different pieces of ice. We half expected them to try to catch one of them, but they decided to come over to our ship again and spend some real quality time with us instead.
Our interactions with these animals this afternoon were truly remarkable and it would be hard to determine who enjoyed it the most…the whales or us. It would also be hard to try to describe the excitement in the air during all this as several thousands of photos were taken during the interactions.
