Antarctic Near-Miss

From Trevor Potts in Antarctica:

Picture 1 - This is me driving a zodiac past the remains of a large tabular iceberg when a huge piece of ice dropped off without warning.

Picture 2 – This caused a huge wave as I crashed through the brash ice, so I gunned the engine to out-run the wave.

Picture 3 – The shock of the first calving caused the second berg to calve with hundreds of tons of ice sliding off just as I was getting clear of the first one. This caused an even bigger and closer wave.

Picture 4 - As some of the weight was released the bergs both reared up in spectacular fashion and rocked up and down causing further commotion.

Earlier, three or four minutes into the start of this iceberg cruise, my engine had died (dirty fuel) as I was passing these bergs at a few hundred yards distance. I had to wait ten minutes for another zodiac to tow me back to the ship for the spare zodiac. As you can imagine I was a little concerned at another engine failure at this point.

Background to the story:

For ten years I have been zodiac cruising around the stranded bergs in Pleneau Bay, often spotting Leopard Seals and Crabeater Seals hauled out on the small ice floes. We also see Humpback Whales, Minke Whales and Killer Whales in this area. We usually work with 5/6 zodiacs and spend about an hour or so cruising the icebergs. We occasionally see the bergs disintegrate but this spectacular double calving so close, was a first for me. Although it looks in the photos like I was very close I was about 200 yds away. It was still necessary to quickly get some distance away from the resulting waves.

Trevor runs the camp site at Ormsaigbeg, details here.