Well we finally found some ice.   We came back up into the Bransfield Strait.  For the last 2 years the Bransfield has been packed with ice and wildlife lounging on ice.  This year, not so much, but we did find some lovely ice.  We were looking for a nice sheltered spot to  calibrate our acoustics (we use something like a fancy fish finder, to help us “see” the krill patches” and they need to be calibrated every year).   Along the way  to finding the sweet spot for calibration, we found  some  icebergs, and some slushy chunky ice with aspirations of grandeur.

As we were searching for a good spot,  we came across some beautiful icebergs.

Winds picked up to 50 knots which cut my photography short.  It was rather had to take an in focus photo with my lens blowing around so much!

For the passed few nights we have gotten pancake ice at night,  but it was always gone by morning.  Not today!  Today we had pancakes through breakfast and lunch and I am really hopeful that we will have them all day

Pancakes are lovely, gorgeous things.  If this were early in the winter, it would be awesome to see  pancakes.  This late in the season  you would expect to see a few pancakes and more thicker,  larger first year ice.   The largest we have seen-  with the exception of the icebergs, are newly formed (just a few weeks old at most) pancakes.  This   certainly is a warm low ice winter.

The lack of sea ice means that we are cranking through our science.  We have been super busy.  We have already sampled at 50 stations.   I am exhausted just thinking about it all!   Hurray for science!  Booo for so much wide open water.