Rare Whale Feeding to Ocean Rescue —
It’s Just Another Day Exploring Antarctica

Hours after witnessing a rare display of orca whales teaching their young to hunt, People to People Student Ambassadors were on deck as their ship, the M/V Polar Star, rescued another boat from entrapment in the powerful Antarctic ice.

Eighty young people from around the globe, including 50 alumni Ambassadors, were aboard the icebreaking vessel participating in the two-week Students on Ice Antarctica Expedition in December 2004. Accompanied by a team of 30
scientists, experts, teachers and journalists from

10 countries, the 13- to 19-year-old students were preparing for bed or already asleep December 25 when the Polar Star received a distress call from a ship about 25 miles away.

Expedition Leader Geoff Green described the situation in an online journal: “Strong northeasterly winds had pushed the pack ice to the south and unexpectedly and quickly trapped the vessel in its tracks. We quickly weighed anchor and proceeded full speed ahead towards their position. … We were the only icebreaker in the area capable of making it through the difficult ice conditions.”

Reaching the troubled ship, a Russian research vessel, around 5 a.m., December 26, the Polar Star began an all-day effort to save the boat from the powerful encircling ice. “It looked like solid land,” explained Student Ambassador Phillip Swarts of Indiana. “There was ice as far as you could see.”
 

Student Ambassador Delegation Leader Mary Hansen said, “It was as if you’d taken a white sheet and put it over everything. The ship was just surrounded by white ice.”

The situation stirred discussion among students of the infamous 1914-1916 Antarctic expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton. His ship, the Endurance, remained trapped for 11 months, until the pressure  of the ice slowly crushed and sank it, leaving Shackleton and his crew as castaways without the modern devices of radios and satellite telephones.

Aboard the Polar Star, students and their leaders spent much of the day watching the efforts to dislodge the Akademik Sergey Vavilov from the ice and attending lectures by Antarctic

experts. Expeditionary David Fletcher, a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, gave a well-timed presentation on the ice of Antarctica. He covered ice pack, bergy bits, bergs, floe ice, ice formation and ice melt — important aspects of life in the ever-changing blue and white Antarctic environment.

In the hands of experienced Captain Asbjorn and his capable crew, the Polar Star maneuvered around the Russian ship in what Student Ambassador Delegation Leader Ken Kramme described as “a ballet in motion.”

During the rescue, explained Kramme, the Polar Star twice attached lines to tow the Russian boat through the icy waters and each time, “Snap, snap, they broke!” It was “a long and tedious task.”

The Polar Star succeeded in breaking up the ice and guiding the Russian ship to open waters. The passengers and crew of the Akademik Sergey Vavilov were saved from the fate that beset Shackleton and his small band of explorers, who had suffered months of frostbite and pain, but somehow survived.
 

“It was quite a scene, our two ships alone with ice around us as far as the eye could see,” noted Expedition Leader Green. “Three cheers rang out for our Captain for his awesome display of ice navigation when we finally came back out of the ice at 5:00 p.m. In the big picture, the day was a great lesson and example of Mother Nature’s power and the need for us to respect her. A profound and exciting way of reinforcing in the students our need to reconnect with the natural world we live in.”

The rescue was especially poignant for Hansen, whose ties to Russia date back to 1989 and 1990 when she first led People to People programs to the Soviet Union. “The people on the Russian ship were so happy; they were all out standing on deck,” she observed. “We were waving and they were waving to us, especially when they got moving! … The students witnessed the goodwill of man.”

As for the whale hunting lesson of the day before, it was a phenomenon first reported by National Geographic in 1976 and an event Green had witnessed only one time prior in 64 icy Antarctic adventures. Student Ambassadors watched as a pod of orcas taught their calves how to handle and capture a seal by spy hopping or eyeing the fellow mammal and bumping, rocking and splashing the small iceberg where the seal had sought refuge.

“The seal swayed into the middle of the iceberg for what he thought was safety,” explained Student Ambassador Lacy Warner of New York. “They circled all around him … After using their bodies to bump it a few times with no luck they reverted to using their tails. They swam a little bit away and then came at it full force, wrapping the iceberg with the seal on it in water.”

Eve Millett, a Student Ambassador from Ohio, described the scene: “It was incredible to see this amazing act of nature right in front of our eyes. The seal would not give up and kept fighting. The whales would gang up on the seal and try and flip the iceberg; it was so cool.” The senior whales did not seek to dine on the seal right away, but aimed to create a fins-on learning opportunity for the young whales. “At one point,” explained Green, “the enormous male which had a dorsal fin of at least six feet high actually gently placed the seal back onto the ice floe with his mouth! It was all an experience that will stay with each of us for a lifetime.”

Swarts, who was participating in his fourth Student Ambassador program said, “You’re feeling sorry for the seal, but it is nature’s way. I was pretty much awestruck the whole time.”

A remarkable day perhaps, but then each day in Antarctica is like no other before or after. The adventurous students who left behind their TVs, phones and computers for the Students on Ice Antarctica Expedition unveiled the message of a harsh region known for icebergs, penguins and seals and whales. “This [program] will change my life forever,” wrote Jonathan Leff, a Student Ambassador from North Carolina. “It will change the way I interact with people and the way I look at things happening in our world. I hope to take something away from this exciting expedition to use in my life. I also hope to come again to the Antarctic.”

To discover the fate of the seal and follow the students’ day-by-day journey through Antarctica visit the website, www.studentsonice.com/antarctica2004.