more about the waterfalls of the giant Antarctic Iceberg A52: Fresh or Salt?

Ice Cube leaving Palmer Station,
Antarctica, aboard the
R/V Laurence M. Gould.
(Click etc., it gets prettier.)

Ice Cube writes:

This wasn't the best scenery yesterday, but then my mug can't compete with the good views.

We had glass smooth waters and glorious sun leaving Palmer Station, and we went the inside passage between Anvers Island and the Peninsula ... meaning awesome views on both sides of the ship for 6 hours straight. This morning was a 6 am run in the zodiac over to Cape Shireff to pick up a beaker (scientist) and drop off a generator and fresh pillows for the remaining fur seal torturers.

Nice start to another beautiful antarctic day. We'll do xmas eve dinner and secret santa gift exchange tonight, and we're due in to Punta Arenas in 3 more days.

-- dan

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At 06:35 AM 12/22/2005 -0500, Unkie Munkie wrote:

While the bet was yet unsettled,
what theory could account for the
waterfalls on A52 being seawater?
How could seawater get to the top of the
freshwater iceberg? Some sort of
capillary up mechanism?

reading your e-mails I am this far

|--|

from running away to sea.

B

==========================================

The Scientist replies from Antarctic Seas:

The reason people didn't want to believe that the waterfalls were fresh water was because the air temperature hovers right around 0 C and the sun is usually hidden by clouds, so people just couldn't grasp how so much ice could be melting to release that much water. But it's a HUGE iceberg with a HUGE surface area on top.

Capillary action actually does draw seawater up to the surface of sea-ice, but there the top surface may only be centimeters above the water, not 30-40 meters. There are lots of pipes, channels, caves, and crevasses in the icebergs. The thought was that as the berg bobs in the ocean, some of the pipes (if shaped just right) could pump the brine up onto the surface. Sort of like with the blowholes in New Zealand, or other places where the wave action enters long cave tubes in the rock and shoots out the far end like a geiser.

I had my doubts, but I stuck to my guns and voted for fresh. And I licked the sample bottle to make sure before handing it off to the beakers (scientists) to do their official taste test.

You had a previous request about tour ships down here. I haven't found any good info, except for the pretty obvious idea that the smaller the number of passengers, most likely the better the quality of the cruise. Although with the Drake Passage potentially having the wildest seas in the world, maybe there is such a thing as too small.

-- Louie

Dan Elsberg
Marine {Computer/Instrument} Specialist
Antarctic Research/Supply Vessel L.M.Gould

Current Position (Lat +N/-S, Lon +E/-W):

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