It was mystical because the blowing snow sometimes looked like people were standing on tall towers! But it was only snow and icebergs!
The route our boat is taking retraces the path of some previous voyages. We are resampling ocean water in the same places where measurements were taken about ten years ago. This way, we can examine how the ocean has changed in the past ten years. We are traveling along the sea ice edge to see if we can reach the southern sites we want to sample, but some of the sites may still be covered in ice at this time of year. Because the visibility is low with the fog and there are many icebergs and smaller pieces of ice around, the boat has to go slower to find a safe route.
