31.1.18 Now we know why….
Last week, on a cloudless day, Saeid, my new “assistent” (a Ph.D. student), and I decided to go to the coast to see the iceberges in the beautiful light again. Well, in the evening clouds came in and it was overcast. We decided to go anyway, and as soon as we reached the ice edge the clouds started to break up (against the forecast…). At first, there was just a stripe of light that slowly wandered over the sea ice, sometimes just shining on the penguins, while the sea ice behind and the icebergs were still in the shade. Then more and more then sun came back. It was a magic play of light and shadows and we just stood there and watched.
An hour after we had left, the sea ice started to break up. We know this because the biologists, who study the penguins, have an automatic camera there and they showed us a spectacular time lapse video. The entire sea ice pack broke along the ice shelf edge and moved almost as a whole away from the edge, then quickly breaking apart it was driven out of Atka bay. Absolutely spectacular! We missed it just by one hour.
So, on the following evening we went again and saw the deep blue sea!