Amber on Ice

26 October -- So the day that I was out Dive Tending, I did see a bunch of seals including a baby pup. These are some pics of the Weddell Seals. They tend to lay around for hours on the Sea Ice. Not a lot of movement. We saw the mom and baby move quite a lot; they have that whole "worm" type dance move going on. It's so cute to watch. I mean seeing seals, yes you can see them in various parts of the world. But seriously, I kept having to pinch myself that I was watching seals in the wild in freakin' Antarctica. I mean I could've been filming a National Geographic or Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom documentary... Craziness! No penguins for me yet but I'm determined. Every time I speak with my nephew Caleb on the phone he's all about the penguins.

I did see a very interesting documentary the other night by these two scientists from Scripp's regarding the Emperor Penguin colonies down here. Due to global warming effects, large sections of the ice shelf have begun to calf or break off. This creates these massive ice bergs, one recently named B15 that was measured to be about the size of Jamaica. The ice berg wreaked havoc with the sea ice movement down here, essentially the sea ice in McMurdo Sound hasn't gone out in several years. In addition, the ice berg ran smack into the coastline of Ross Island and right into one of the largest Emperor Colonies. When the scientists went back to the colony to see the effects, they found very few birds left and no chicks at all. Not good.