Fri, 7 Feb 1997The picture below doesn't do justice to the scene described above. While the camera flash only caught the nearest ice-rafts, the eye could see them extending hundreds of yards out into the blackness. I apologize for the poor quality of this photo, but disposable cameras weren't meant to take photos of landscapes at night. The image below has been heavily processed using The GIMP: the original photo showed almost nothing.
Last night, Bob asked my watch (the 8pm-4am watch) to stay up and check to make sure the Sea Beam (a high-tech sidescan bottom-profiling sonar) was giving data which agreed with the PDR (an ancient strip-chart recording depth sounder) as we went over the continental slope. We sat around waiting to get there, when around 1 in the morning, I heard a slushy, grinding noise as if someone were rubbing wet sand across the side of the ship. Then the ship stopped dead, and I noticed it had stopped rocking. I put on warm clothes and went outside, to find we were surrounded by ice, as far as the eye could see. Not little chunks, but foot-thick pancakes the size of mattresses, with raised edges where they ground against one another. You must understand, this ship doesn't have an ice-strengthened hull, and could only push the pancakes aside very slowly. The possibility of getting frozen in was very real. The bridge crew were playing searchlights over the scene, trying to find a way through. After a couple of hours of maneuvering, we were able to go back the way we came.
A more common occurrence, especially near the Labrador coast, were tiny
icebergs called "growlers", shown below. The one pictured probably weighs as
much as a large pickup truck, plenty enough to dent the hull. This one passed
30 feet to starboard. Click on the photo for an enlarged version.
Mon, 24 Feb 1997
[Near the Labrador coast,] our way was impeded by long ribbons of small icebergs, ranging from trashcan-size to eighteen-wheeler size. Most had their tops eroded by the waves, with a flat base just beneath the surface, and spires and arches emerging from the base. They were pale blue-white, though the part below the surface appeared deep electric blue. The sculpted shapes above the water tempt the brain in the same way clouds do: I saw an alligator, a mermaid, and a polar bear sculpted in the ice. The alligator was particularly cool: about thirty feet long, riding low in the water with a long slot cut in one side, which was dripping with icicle-teeth.
Near the Greenland coast, we saw numerous icebergs when the weather was
clear. When the weather wasn't, we didn't see them, which was worse. Luckily
they show up well on radar. Anyway, the photo below is one of my more daring
experiments in photography: It's a "zoom" photo, taken by placing the lens of
my disposable camera up to the eyepiece of my binoculars. This actually works,
but it's very tough to get the alignment correct, and vignetting is severe.
(Click on the image to see the original, uncropped version.) The iceberg (a
small one) is probably 30 feet high.
More pictures of growlers and sea ice, courtesy Bob Pickart:
Photo credit: Bob Pickart
Photo credit: Bob Pickart
Photo credit: Bob Pickart
| Previous Page | Top Page | Next Page |
Jason Goodman (Goodmanj@mit.edu)| Up to my home page | |