Saturday September 13
We spent the morning at Inigsulik Bugt, a very narrow channel between an island and the mainland of Greenland, with a section of the ice cap coming right down to the water. Watching the ship navigate around icebergs and into the narrow bay, while the sun rose over the ice cap, was a special way to start the morning. The water was exceptionally still and clear, allowing views to the bottom of the fiord during Zodiac rides as we traversed through icebergs.
During lunch we navigated out of the Bugt and continued south in Melville Bay. The channel was so narrow, but deep, that the ship, at times, appeared to be only about 60 feet from the cliff wall. The cloudless blue sky and warm sun (despite an air temperature of -2 Celsius) gave wonderful reflections of the cliffs around us. Except for the icebergs, it looked like an autumn reflection in Vermont or Maine— oh, and except that there are no trees here.
One of the highlights of these trips is the dive team. The ship’s staff includes a pair of divers, who have gone down almost every day that we have stopped somewhere. Their video footage of kelp, jellyfish, odd polar marine invertebrates and even coral, is a highlight of the recap time before dinner. Today’s dive included sea butterflies (sweet and peaceful) and sea angels (aggressive predators) as well as cauliflower coral (a polar coral that does not build a reef). The coral was able to grow on an underwater cliff face that is concave. This structure protects the coral from being scraped off by an iceberg.
In this part of Greenland, we have returned to the land of icebergs with only some overnight sea ice. Icebergs come in many shapes and sizes, and it is amusing to associate real or imaginary creatures to their shapes.
Pictured: sunrise over the Greenland ice sheet, reflections of the (metamorphic) stone cliffs along the Bugt (2), today’s goblin head iceberg, ridges iceberg with the reflection distorted by the ship’s wake
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