Our ship came in! It arrived at the harbour last night and is quietly waiting to receive us this afternoon. Our bags are repacked and have been trucked down to the docks.

This morning we had a "speed dating" event with the faculty, researchers, and journalists. Seamus O'Regan is here, a host on Canada AM. He will be documenting the expedition and his blogs are on the CTV Canada AM website.

I will lose the ability to connect to the internet this afternoon, so this will be my last entry here until we come back. I will be contributing to the Group website with photos and blogs for the next two weeks. There's a photo of me in my red VIU fleece, playing an ice breaker game on Day 3 on the Students on Ice Website http://www.studentsonice.com/U09/AUE-follow-expedition.html

The enteries are broken into days. Tab at the top to see the different days activities.

After the "speed dating", where we got to meet all the crew, we had a lecture given by Eric on the origin of Antarctica. The continent was part of the supercontinent 40 million years ago. Due to tectonics, the plates shifted and the land separated. Antractica remains isolated due to affects of the Southern Ocean where the world's strongest winds create the biggest currents and the largest waves, which all work to keep cold water circulating around the continent. This also keeps the warm water away and the point where the two meet is called the Antarctic Convergence.

Climate change is increasing the strength of the currents in this area. The world's mightiest currents flow west to east, driven by the winds, around Antarctica, however, there is a current flowing in the opposite direction around the shoreline. The amount of water travelling in the outer current is more then 200 times the flow of all the worlds rivers combined (Amazon, Nile, etc.)

On our crossing of the Drake Passage for the next two days we will encounter waves of 3 - 4 meters. At times in the Southern Ocean, waves can reach 8 meters. Wish me luck on the crossing.

Tomorrow I will be giving my class lecture on Introduction to Antarctic Tourism. 

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