Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

1.2°C and +1 °C, there was a continuous covering of new ice on the bay and it was
thickening and layering due to sheets sliding over and under each other in the sea
swell overnight. The air was very still with reflections in the clear patches
Another day it was round about +1 °C all day and inside the hut was too warm
for comfort that night. Derek wanted to take some bearings from Balin Point and the
bay was fairly free of ice. We launched the dory quite easily, but the new ice was
thicker than we thought and it took much time and effort to get across just to Knife
Point - like rowing through treacle! Quite suddenly a heavy sea sprang up and white
tops were forming. I was afraid that the pack would come in and prevent us getting
back to the beach so we decided to turn round. Sure enough the pack came in and in
half an hour the bay was full of large floes. We had snow that night and all next day
there was thick fog. The days were now very short. The pack to the south was very
fragmented, but the large bergs remained and in our cove there were several large
bergy bits and growlers.
It became unseasonably warm - to +3.9°C at night - starting with an orange dawn
light on Wave Peak, which spread and diluted its intensity on the other mountains.
The sky was cloudless, but as the sun warmed the ground, small clouds appeared
and coalesced only to dissipate on rising. We had quite a controversy at breakfast as
to whether a cloud on Snow Hill was a cloud or merely the rocks with rime
encrustation. Nevertheless clouds never really developed and the sunshine recorder
burned a trace of 6.6 hrs.
On 4 May the morning temperature was +1.3 °C. After a false start the sun came
out and Coronation appeared above low cloud, a sea fret developed and blotted out
everything for an hour or so, then just as quickly it cleared again and remained clear
- the night was starlit. The ice now stretched in a line from Gourlay Point to
Robertson Islands with a number of large bergs studded in it. The pack was
unconsolidated but appeared to be continuous on the horizon. More mild and
blustery weather followed; the sea was in a fury and a considerable swell broke on
the edge of the ice. The brash in the bay was pretty solid and the edge moved north
as the swell brought in more to add to it.
Next day after a gale during the night it was calm at daybreak and the
temperature fell to fell to -3.3°C by the evening. Then the wind got up again, gale and
snow continued throughout the night and in the morning it was -5.5°C, remaining
steady throughout the day. The sun shone for 1.6 hrs and the brown moss looked
ruby coloured contrasted with the pale blue shadows on the snow. The pack had
been blown out of sight. There were however some very large bergs along the
horizon and a suspicion of ice-blink (…) to the south.
A few days later the morning temperature was -7.3°C but rose during the day to
-4.2°C. The recorder showed 2.5 hrs of sunshine, but this was more real than
apparent! A gale was blowing most of the day and when Derek and I went up to
Observation Bluff for the ice observation it was very chilly. The pack began to appear
again in long strings from the south. At night the wind dropped, so it was flat calm
outside and very warm inside. There was a snowfall in the night and a blizzard all
next day reaching 45 knots at night. The body of the pack was nowhere to be seen,
but isolated floes and thin brash were moving into the bay to pile up on the eastfacing
shores. The gale continued and the temperature fell rapidly to -10°C the next
night, when it weakened and gusts became infrequent. The gale had torn off
177