Dap offers two different programs: a full-day and an overnight, which descriptions are found in http://www.victory-cruises.com/fly_antarctica.voyage.html

BAE 146 - The biggest craft of the fleet

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The available evidence – from published statements to information from inside sources – indicates that Japan’s whaling fleet is calling it quits, at least for this season, two months and hundreds of whales earlier than usual.

“Putting safety as a priority, the fleet has halted scientific whaling for now,” Tatsuya Nakaoku of Japan’s Fisheries Agency told Reuters this week. The safety issue to which he referred was Sea Shepherd, whose ships have been harassing the fleet since the start of this season, and which appears to have reduced the catch substantially.

BLOG: Do Whales Need This War?

Despite the criticism that has been directed toward Sea Shepherd (including by a certain blogger), the organization’s tactics this year appear to have been hugely successful in limiting the number of whales being killed. But there is a growing confidence among environmentalists that this week’s developments mark not just a suspension of this year’s hunt, but the beginning of the end of Japan’s whaling in the Antarctic – an outcome that is likely the result of several factors that have been bubbling beneath the surface and have now all come to a boil at once:

Opposition Is Hardening In the Region: New Zealand and, especially, Australia have been among the most vocal opponents of Japan’s Antarctic whaling for years, but of late that pressure has increased. The Australian government has filed a lawsuit against Japan via the International Court of Justice, arguing that the so-called scientific whaling program violates Japan’s obligations under international law. And increasingly, the countries of South America have become perhaps the most reliable anti-whaling bloc within the International Whaling Commission. Prior to Japan’s announcement of the suspension of its hunt, the so-called Buenos Aires Group of IWC members – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Uruguay – issued a statement expressing “their strongest rejection to the announced ‘scientific whaling’ hunting of almost a thousand whales included some in the threatened species category, planned for the Southern Whale Sanctuary.” And the Chilean government said its navy would “monitor the movements” of the fleet’s factory ship.

There Is Very Little Demand For The Meat: For years, opponents of Japan’s whaling have been pointing out that the cruelest irony of all is that it is being conducted to procure meat that fewer and fewer people in Japan want to eat. Despite efforts to expand the market and increase consumption, the fleet’s supply has exceeded demand for years, resulting in a deep-frozen whale meat stockpile. Last month, it was claimed that that stockpile hit an all time high of over 6,000 tonnes.

The Industry Is Broke: Because the industry is economically unsustainable on its own merits, it has long been heavily subsidized by the government, which spent a total of US$164 million between 1988 and 2009, according to an analysis by WWF. That was a lot to spend even when the economy was flush, but may simply have been unsustainable now that the country’s budgetary situation is dire. The first firm indications that the financial rug was being pulled out from beneath the industry came when the fleet departed for the Antarctic this season later than usual, and with fewer vessels.

“The reduced size of the Japanese whaling fleet means they will be unable to catch more than half of their quota,” predicted Wakao Hanaoka of Greenpeace at the time. “We are witnessing the further collapse of the already dying whaling industry: unable to retain crew or maintain public support- we will see them back in Japan much earlier than in previous years.”

Then there are the potential complications caused by future financial uncertainties, among them a new requirement by the International Maritime Organization that, beginning next season, no vessel running on heavy fuel oil (as does the whaling fleet) will be allowed to operate in Antarctic waters.

The Industry Has Been Publicly Disgraced in Japan. In 2008, Greenpeace produced evidence that the whaling operation was riddled with corruption; for example, crew members on board the fleet’s factory ship Nisshin Maru were stealing whale meat. Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki of Greenpeace intercepted a box of whale meat that had been sent from the Nisshin Maru and labeled as “cardboard,” and presented it to the authorities. The unexpected response was that the two were arrested, detained without charge for 23 days, ultimately found guilty of theft, and given a one-year suspended sentence. But the attempts to deflect attention and blame ultimately failed. In December, the Fisheries Agency of Japan (FAJ) admitted that five officials were to be punished for accepting gifts of whale meat from the whaling company. To make matters worse, those officials sailed on board the Nisshin maru as supervisors, their mandate specifically to prevent such illegality. Yoyohiko Ota of the Fisheries Agency bowed apologetically on television as he announced the news.

Subsequently, the FAJ has announced it has reprimanded two more officials, including Jun Yamashita, the agency’s number two civil servant and a prominent member of the country’s IWC delegation.

All of the above prompted Sato to blog just a few weeks ago that, “Japanese whaling will come to an end – the question is simply when.”

In the Antarctic at least, the answer to that question just might be: very soon indeed.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/is-this-the-end-of-antarctic-whaling.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1

Scientists want to learn more about Antarctica because even a thaw of the fringes could raise sea levels and swamp low-lying coasts. The continent, discovered only in 1820, contains enough ice to raise world sea levels by 57m.

“In Antarctic science we have been missing good records of sea surface temperatures near the ice sheet,” said lead author Amelia Shevenell of University College London and the University of Washington, Seattle.

“We are starting to fill in the gaps,” she said of the study in the journal Nature.

“Surface ocean temperatures at the continental margin of the western Antarctic Peninsula cooled by 3°C – 4°C over the past 12 000 years,” said the report, based on biological material in sediments.

Natural influence

The cooling, caused by shifts in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, cut sea temperatures in the area to around 0°C in past decades. The cooling is now being offset by climate change.

The Antarctic Peninsula is warming at a rate of about 3.4°C per century, it said. Several Antarctic ice shelves have retreated in the past 30 years, a trend widely blamed by scientists on human emissions of greenhouse gases.

The UN panel of climate experts projected in a 2007 report that seas might rise by 18cm to 59cm this century, more if parts of Antarctica or Greenland ice sheets melted. Antarctica’s ice is too deep-frozen to suffer a big thaw.

Shevenell said it was not possible to work out how far temperatures would have to rise to trigger more ice shelf collapse or wider melting.

The study also said the cooler trend was masked by shorter-term swings of between 2°C and 4°C, apparently linked in the past 2 000 years to a new, natural influence of tropical Pacific weather patterns.

James Bendle, of the University of Glasgow, wrote in a related article in Nature that the study was a step to help work out the influence of the Pacific weather patterns, which could affect sea level rise if they intensify.

- Reuters

http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Antarctic-cooling-identified-20110210

The summer Antarctic flights were due to start in mid-December. (Australian Antarctic Division: Dan Colbourne)

Flights between Australia and Antarctica have been grounded so far this summer due to warm weather on the icy continent.

The air service between Hobart and the Wilkins Aerodrome near Casey Station usually starts mid-December but has not begun because of safety concerns at the runway.

Ice temperatures have been above minus five degrees, making it unsafe for planes to land.

The director of the Australian Antarctic Division, Lyn Maddock, says the situation is being monitored daily but she did not know how long the higher temperatures would persist.

“Safety is paramount and flights will not occur until the runway is cleared for landing,” she said.

No scientific programs have had to be cancelled and until the runway is reopened, flights from Hobart are being diverted to the US base McMurdo.

From there scientists will travel to Casey on smaller planes.

“We’ve only had one scientist unable to join his project so that’s pretty good and we build a certain amount of capacity to deal with contingencies into our program so that when these sort of things happen we can adjust the program,” she said.

The air operations of other countries have also been affected by the warm weather.

Ms Maddock says the Wilkins Aerodrome is still the best drop-off location even though the weather is unpredictable.

“That was seen as by far the most preferable location for us in terms of it being relatively close to one of our major stations,” she said.

“It’s about 70 to 80 kilometres from Casey. Any further than that you start getting problems in relocating people.”

The Division schedules up to 15 flights a season from Hobart.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/05/3106621.htm

Antarctica is large – though not so large as it appears on a Mercator projection. It has an area greater than Europe. In addition, it is surrounded by enormous ice shelves that grow and shrink with the seasons. The Ross Ice Shelf alone is as large as France.

About 98% of the land is perpetually covered with snow and ice. The average thickness of the snow is 1.6 km (1 mile).

There is no wildlife in the interior of the continent. Seals, whales, and birds live around the perimeter.

Because of its low average precipitation, Antarctica is considered to be a desert.

Antarctica contains about 70% of the world’s fresh water.

There are several large mountain ranges on the continent, including active volcanoes.

The coldest temperature ever recorded was in Antarctica. It was a chilly -89.2°C (-129°F) . https://cburrell.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/amazing-facts-about-antarctica/

Today was supposed to be my last full day in Antarctica. But several of us learned last night that we’ll be here an extra day, which allowed us to enjoy today’s special trip. The Antarctic “summer” research season ends in mid February, with the last flights to the South Pole until October. Later I’ll be doing a story about the group of men and women who’ll “winter over” at the Pole, seeing no one else except each other from February until that October flight. A couple of days after the last Pole flight, the last flights will leave McMurdo for Christchurch. Those wintering at McMurdo won’t have any way of leaving, and no one will come in until the first of next season’s flights in September, which is spring in Antarctica.

As the Polar Sea pushes through the ice, large chunks of broken ice flow past the side of the ship. The blue shading in the ice shows that it’s “old ice,” sea ice that formed last year or even earlier. The red tint is the reflection off the red sides of the Polar Sea.

People are coming in from the Field Camps scattered around the Continent to wait in McMurdo for flights home. Each day in the galley (the dining hall) we’re seeing people we met at the South Pole, at Siple Dome and in the Dry Valleys. To handle the rush, the Air Force has started flying a C-141 from Christchurch to the “Ice Runway” near McMurdo that can handle airplanes that land on wheels. The C-141 is a jet, which cuts the McMurdo-Christchurch trip to about five hours, not the eight needed for the turboprop LC-130 ski-equipped airplanes. It can also carry about three times as many passengers as the LC-130s. Delays in C-141 flights have given me the extra day in Antarctica and I’m now scheduled to leave on Saturday, Jan. 30.

This morning, Bob Boyd of Knight-Ridder newspapers, Ginny Figler of The Antarctic Sun, a very good bi-weekly newspaper published by Antarctic Support Associates here, Mary Hanson of the National Science Foundation, and I joined David Ainley, a penguin researcher and about a dozen of his associates for a day-long trip on the U.S. Coast Guard ice breaker Polar Sea. The ship was taking Ainley and his group to Beaufort Island, 56 miles north of McMurdo, to wrap up a research project there.

Breaking ice on an ice breaker is noisy, vibration-filled and fascinating. The Polar Sea is here to cut a channel through the ice for the oil tanker that made its yearly visit to McMurdo last week and the yearly supply ship, which is expected next week. It’s also helping scientists reach places, such as Beaufort Island, and the sea ice that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to study.

Lunch in the ships ward room (officers’ dining room) was a real treat because not only was the food delicious with fresh vegetables, but it was served on plates at a table with a table cloth. In the McMurdo dining halls all meals are served on plastic versions of the metal trays I remember from the Marine Corps.

The Polar Sea put Ainley’s party of researchers ashore in a World War II LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicles, Personnel) with a front ramp that comes down. This means the researchers were able to reach the beach without having to wade in near-freezing water. A couple of days ago I talked at length with Ainley about his research and will be doing a story on it. While Penguins that live along the coasts of southern Africa, South America, Australia and New Zealand are being threatened by human activities, Antarctica’s penguins are doing well, Ainley says. But there numbers do fluctuate with changes in the amount of yearly sea ice.

About 5 p.m. a Coast Guard helicopter took our party of four journalists back to McMurdo. This was another of those experiences unlike anything else I’ve done. The ship was pitching and rolling in the waves and the winds were blowing faster than 30 mph for our takeoff from the helipad at the rear of the ship. Antarctica’s fabled winds upheld their reputation, blowing up to 50 mph and giving us a turbulent ride. But the crew’s calm professionalism made the bouncy trip over a frigid ocean a mild adventure, not something to worry about.

McMurdo Station is in South Western Antarctica and the Ross Sea near New Zealand

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/coldscience/latest/latest16.htm

Voyages from New Zealand to this vast, mysterious and mostly unexplored Ross Sea area can be found at http://www.victory-cruises.com/antarctic_ross_sea_orion.html