‘Convergence’ in the Drake Passage
Far from the nearest shore, a petrel skims so low over the waters of the Drake Passage that a wingtip touches the waves.
This is the second part of a series on a voyage from Ushuaia to the Antarctic Peninsula. Click here for part one: Beagle beer and friendly huskies in Ushuaia.
Our first day at sea is mellow. We make good speed, heading almost due south and averaging 12 knots, with huge albatrosses and petrels swerving and swooping alongside to keep us company.
Trying out a borrowed 300 millimeter lens keeps me busy for hours. I try to steady myself while keeping the horizon straight and focusing on the speeding birds at the same time. Finally, I manage to snap a half-way decent shot of a petrel skimming so close to the cobalt-blue water that it’s wingtip touches the surface.
When I wander up to the bridge, the Russian crew seems thrilled by the calm weather.
“Mr. Drake is sleeping,” says Russian Captain Nikolay Parfenyuk. “He is not hungry today. Mrs. Drake is saying, hello to all of you,” the captain jokes.
The M/V Professor Molchanov anchored in still water off Dundee Island. PHOTO BY BOB BERWYN. Click on the image to browse and buy Antarctica photos from my online gallery.
The Molchanov is a Finnish-built ice-hardened vessel previously used by Russia’s polar research program. The ship is now leased to Oceanwide Expeditions for tourist expeditions on both ends of the Earth. In most conditions, the bridge is open to passengers, so we’re able watch Parfenyuk and his crew of officers plot a course through the Southern Ocean and scan the radar screen for errant icebergs.
A fin whale breaches the surface of the Drake Passage at sunset. PHOTO BY BOB BERWYN. Click on the image to browse and buy Antarctica photos in my online gallery.
The swell increases during the second night, tossing a few chairs around our cabin. Evelin Lieback, the ship’s doctor, hands out motion-sickness patches to several passengers, and a number of places remain empty in the dining room during the evening meal. Leigh and I don’t succumb to the dizziness at all. Instead, we enjoy the rocking and rolling in our comfortable berth.
By dinner the next day, it’s smooth sailing once again. Just as the kitchen crew starts serving desert, expedition leader Jan Belger says whales have been sighted. We all drop our forks and rush on deck, marveling as the gentle giants flash their dorsals and blow clouds of mist into the gold-tinted sunset. Fin whales are the second-largest cetaceans. Males in the southern hemisphere grow up to 88-feet long and weigh 70 to 80 tons.
For more information on the ecology of fin whales visit the IUCN’s Red List web site.
The Molchanov is full for the voyage, 52 passengers in all, with a large contingent of jolly Dutch. There are a few Germans, a couple of Israelis, a well-traveled couple from South Africa and some Brits. the passel of Americans includes eight from our own home state of Colorado as well as a few Midwesterners. One young traveler from California is making the most of the recession. He used his severance package to finance a world trip, including the jaunt to Antarctica. His berth aboard the Molchanov was booked last-minute in Ushuaia at a significant discount.Two of the experienced guides are Dutch, the third is a French biologist, and our cooks are Malaysian, so the good ship is bit like a floating United Nations.
Convergence
The big milestone for this part of the trip is the Antarctic Convergence, where cold water flowing northward from Antarctica mixes with warmer water from the adjacent oceans. The turbulent upwelling is zone of high biological productivity, where phytoplankton nurtures vast swarms of krill, which in turns is food for whales and seabirds. The convergence is part of a circumpolar current — the world’s largest, carrying 130 million cubic meters of water per second, or 100 times the volume of all the world’s rivers combined. The current delineates a discrete body of water and a unique ecologic region. In 2000, the International Hydrographic Organization designated the waters south of the current as the Southern Ocean.
A daily weather map print-out on the bridge of the M/V Professor Molchanov shows a stormy low pressure system centered over the Drake Pass and the Antarctic Convergence Zone.
It’s still a productive life zone, but increased solar ultraviolet radiation through the Antarctic ozone hole in recent years has reduced phytoplankton productivity by as much as 15 percent and damaged the DNA of some fish. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing has depleted stocks of some species unique to the area, including Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish, sold commercially as Chilean sea bass.
There are also concerns about how climate change might affect the circumpolar current, which is known to be important to regulating the world’s climate, but those potential impacts are poorly understood.
[...] This is part three of a series about a voyage from Ushuaia to the Antarctic Peninsula aboard the 52-passenger M/V Professor Molchanov. Click here for Part 1:Beagle beer and friendly huskies in Ushuaia, and here for Part 2: The Drake Passage and Antarctic convergence. [...]