Scientists at the Universit´e de Lyon have found new answers to a phenomenon called “Dead Water”. No this not refer to the newly released WWII movie of the same name, rather it’s a term for the effect seen when a vessel moves through water consisting of two or more layers with different salinity. This problem is typically seen when runoff from a melting glacier forms a relatively thin layer of fresh water on top of denser seawater and results in the loss of vessel speed and steerage.

The magazine New Scientist writes:

Physicist Thierry Dauxois and colleagues from the University of Lyon found that a hidden wave at the interface of the layers invisibly chases and slows a boat (see video, top right).

The toy boat is pulled across the 300-centimetre tank with a constant force by a cable. The water is separated into two layers of different saltiness and hence density, labelled with dye.

Just as described by people who have experienced dead water in the real world, the water’s surface is smooth, but the boat suddenly slows as the concealed wave makes contact.

“It creates a depression below the boat that prevents it from moving,” team member Matthieu Mercier told New Scientist.

The scientists further state this might have been the primary factor resulting in the loss of Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen and his ship Fram. The team, however, has yet to explored the link between the effect and a high number of recent cruise ship sinkings in Antarctica but it does makes sense.

One primary reason for these incidents is the growing popularity of Eco-Tourism which includes touring the Antarctic. For a long period of time this segment of the cruise ship market was dominated by small to medium sized vessels but in recent years large vessels have entered the region forcing small operators to differentiate their services by getting closer to the ice packs and taking more risk. The results have been tragic.

The following video was put together by New Scientist to help explain the phenomenon.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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A briefing on the preliminary research can be found HERE.

by Michael Morrissey

On 11 November 2007 Sola and I departed from Ushuaia, Argentina aboard the M/S Explorer on a cruise meant to follow in the wake of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endeavor. Little did we know how closely we would follow Sir Ernest.

The first time I went to Antarctica was in 2004. I had a few free days before I was returning to Bangkok after being in Bariloche, Argentina to celebrate Simon Bonython’s sixtieth birthday. Prior to leaving Bangkok, Gary Heager, a well-traveled friend, had suggested I visit Ushuaia to earn the bragging rights for having visited the southernmost city in the world.

While in Ushuaia I took a guided tour to see a beaver lodge. Beavers, in Ushuaia? Yes, but introduced from Canada by enterprising Argentines after World War II for their pelts. Predator-less beavers left unchecked have become an environmental disaster.

At the end of the beaver hike, Alicia Petit, a local tour agent offered me a cruise on an icebreaker sailing to Antarctica but I had to be able to leave in two days. I explained to her I had left all my belongings in Buenos Aires and I had reservations to return to Bangkok with visits in Santiago, San Francisco and Tokyo as part of the return. I said if she could change all my reservations and secure my things in BA I’d go. She called me fifteen minutes later and it was all done. I had cell phone then. Alicia became the link to sailing on the M/S Explorer.

I’ve stayed in contact with Alicia and each year she contacts me with Antarctic cruise offers. Simon, Jon Olson and I were first offered an Antarctic trip while touring Bhutan in 2002. We all agreed it was something we wanted to do. Unfortunately for them, by the time Alicia told me about this trip that year they had both left Buenos Aires.

Every year since then, Jon, Simon and I have discussed contacting Alicia to plan an Antarctic cruise. It wasn’t surprising In October, when Alicia contacted me to offer space on the first cruise of the 2007 season, that we all decided to go. It wasn’t too long after this that Jon remembered he had a prior commitment and could not go. Simon’s business required him to stay in Bangkok. Simon, a fellow avid photographer, really wanted to go on this adventure and said he would make every effort to be there.

Alicia reached me while I was photographing the Colorado fall color. Later that month I met up with Sola Morrissey, my daughter, in San Francisco for dinner. I mentioned to her I could not find anyone to go with me and asked if she would be interested. She had recently started working for Architecture for Humanity and wasn’t sure it was good timing, but thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She would check with her employer.

Sola and I discussed including visits to impoverished areas around South America that would tie into her work. The two of us have traveled together before in Europe, Morocco, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Japan; she is a wonderful travel companion. Kaze, my son , was in the process of getting advanced pilot training, so he couldn’t go.

Simon was able to get away just days before the M/S Explorer (not a Microsoft product) departed from Ushuaia. Jon had (that’s past tense) been kicking himself for not going, that is until he heard the news on the radio.

Thanksgiving 2007 was the night I put the Antarctica maxim to the test. The maxim goes “Below 40 degrees south latitude, there is no law. Below 50 degrees south latitude, there is no God.”

We were at 62 degrees 24 minutes South and 57 degrees 16 minutes west, when Sola woke me and Swedish Captain Bengt Witman told us to dress warm before proceeding to our emergency assemble point.

© Copyright Michael Morrissey, All Rights Reserved.

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Article by Michael Morrissey is considered one of the new generation of adventure and travel photographers. Based in Bangkok, Thailand with a passion for travel, Michael got hooked on photography while driving a bus from Istanbul to Katmandu in the 70’s; an obsession briefly interrupted with a twenty year career in business. You can view his photography at: www.mjmorrissey.com

You can read more of Michael’s harrowing tale HERE.

David Hindin, a gCaptain reader from the San Francisco Bay Area pointed us to this image and audio file from the New York Times. They tell us;

A small, historic cruise ship with an imperfect security record was listing dangerously after it struck ice in Antarctic waters today, with 154 passengers and crew members evacuated in a flotilla of lifeboats and inflatable boats, the cruise operator and coast guards said.

Late into the day, the small red and white ship — named the Explorer but known affectionately as “the little red ship” — was listing steeply to starboard, nearly on its side, awash in ice floes and steely gray water. The vessel — on an expedition to trace the doomed route of the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton — sent out a distress signal in the middle of the night (5:24 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time) after it began to take in water through “a fist-sized hole,” said Dan Brown, a spokesman for G.A.P. Adventures, the Toronto-based tour operator that owns and operates the ship. He said the “running assumption” is that it hit an iceberg. Water began to trickle into a cabin and eventually flooded the engine room, causing the ship to lose power.

The accident occurred well north of the Antarctic Circle in an island chain that is part of the Antarctic peninsula, which juts close to South America and has seen sharp warming of temperatures in recent years.As the satellite distress signal was being picked up by coast guard stations in Britain; Norfolk, Va.; and Ushuaia, Argentina, the ship’s 100 passengers — 14 of them American, 24 British, 17 Dutch, 12 Canadian and a smattering of other nationalities— were awakened and told to don warm clothes and life preservers, said Mark Clark, a spokesman for Britain’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which was one of the first authorities to receive the distress signal. They clambered down ladders on the ship’s side to board lifeboats.

Mr. Clark said they were taken aboard a small research vessel, the National Geographic Endeavour, that was nearby, before they were transferred to a Norwegian cruise line.

You can continue reading this NYTimes story by clicking HERE.

(Note: We made an error, the above photo is of the EXPLORER II)

In breaking news the BBC tells us;

More than 150 tourists and crew have been rescued off Argentina from an expedition ship, after it hit ice.

The M/S Explorer began listing close to King George Island in the Antarctic Ocean, near the South Shetland Islands.

Susan Hayes, of Gap Adventures, which owns the ship, said some 100 passengers and 54 crew members were evacuated to lifeboats and then to another ship.

She said the vessel left Ushuaia on Argentina’s southern tip on 11 November on a 19-day trip to the Drake Passage.

The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said it was informed at 0524 GMT on Friday of the incident involving the 2,400-tonne vessel. read more…