Winter Quarters Bay - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Winter Quarters Bay is a small cove of McMurdo Sound

McMurdo Sound

The ice-clogged waters of Antarctica's McMurdo Sound extend about 55 km long and wide. The sound opens into the Ross Sea to the north. The Royal Society Range rises from sea level to 13,205 feet on the western shoreline. The nearby McMurdo Ice Shelf scribes McMurdo Sound's southern boundary...

, Antarctica, located 2,200 miles (3,500 km) due south of New Zealand at 77°50'S. The harbor is the southern-most port in the Southern Ocean

Southern Ocean

The Southern Ocean comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60°S latitude and encircling Antarctica. It is usually regarded as the fourth-largest of the five principal oceanic divisions...

and features a floating ice pier

Ice pier

An ice pier is a man-made structure used to assist the unloading of ships in Antarctica. It is constructed by pumping seawater into a contained area and allowing the water to freeze. By repeating this procedure several times, additional layers are built up. The final structure is many metres in...

for summer cargo operations. The bay is approximately 250m wide and long, with a maximum depth of 33m. The name Winter Quarters Bay refers to Robert Falcon Scott's

Robert Falcon Scott

Captain Robert Falcon Scott, CVO was a Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, and the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–13...

National Antarctic Discovery Expedition

Discovery Expedition

The British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901–04, generally known as the Discovery Expedition, was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since James Clark Ross's voyage sixty years earlier...

(1901-04) which wintered at the site for two seasons.

A small peninsula on the southern tip of Ross Island

Ross Island

Ross Island is an island formed by four volcanoes in the Ross Sea near the continent of Antarctica, off the coast of Victoria Land in McMurdo Sound.-Geography:...

forms the natural harbor at Winters Quarters Bay which offers shelter for ships. The harbor has served the few ships able to penetrate McMurdo Sound's 8 ft (2.4 m) to 12 ft (3.7 m) pack ice ever since the Discovery Expedition

Discovery Expedition

(1901-04).

Today, two ships assisted by an icebreaker

Icebreaker

An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller vessels .For a ship to be considered an icebreaker, it requires three traits most...

annually arrive at Winter Quarters Bay with fuel and cargo to re-supply the adjacent U.S. McMurdo Station

McMurdo Station

McMurdo Station is a U.S. Antarctic research center located on the southern tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program, a branch of the National...

at 77°50′S 166°40′E. The cargo operations also support nearby Scott Base

Scott Base

Scott Base is a research facility located in Antarctica and is operated by New Zealand. It was named after Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Royal Navy, leader of two British expeditions to the Ross Sea area of Antarctica...

and field stations throughout Antarctica. More than 50 years of activity at McMurdo Station

McMurdo Station

has severely polluted the bay.

Bay water characteristics

A shallow submarine ridge marks the mouth of Winter Quarters Bay. Water depths in the bay range from 13m along the ridge to a maximum depth of 33m at the bay's center.

The submarine ridge and Hut Point Peninusula temper the effect of McMurdo Sound

McMurdo Sound

ocean currents. Current meters indicate such minimal currents that the bay can be considered essentially stagnant. In addition the submarine ridge tends to provide a buffer against icebergs moving into the bay and damaging the ice pier

Ice pier

and shoreline. Physical barriers created by such land forms have also concentrated toxic pollutants introduced into the bay from operations at McMurdo Station

McMurdo Station

, according to a 1997 U.S. National Science Foundation sponsored study.

The combination of sun and sufficiently warm air temperatures a few days during midsummer can produce snowmelt on adjacent Ross Island

Ross Island

Ross Island is an island formed by four volcanoes in the Ross Sea near the continent of Antarctica, off the coast of Victoria Land in McMurdo Sound.-Geography:...

. The subsequent runoff is largely diverted by ditches and culverts into McMurdo Sound, rather than the bay, according to the National Science Foundation report.

Harbor pollution

Scientific and support operations at McMurdo Station, beginning with its construction in 1955, have led to severely polluted waters at Winter Quarters Bay. Until 1981, McMurdo Station

McMurdo Station

residents simply towed their garbage out to the sea ice and let nature take its course. The garbage sunk to the sea floor when the ice broke up in the spring, according to news reports.

A 2001 survey of the seabed at Winter Quarters Bay revealed 15 vehicles, 26 shipping containers, and 603 fuel drums, as well as some 1,000 miscellaneous items dumped on an area of some 50 acres (20 hectares). Findings by scuba divers were reported in the State of the Environment Report, a New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

sponsored study.

In addition, sediments in the bay are contaminated with PCBs, metals, and hydrocarbon fuels. A January 2005 edition of the Antarctic Sun, a U.S. National Science Foundation publication, noted that a former landfill located on a hill above the bay is considered to have been a primary source of the fuel and PCB contaminants. PCBs, now banned in the United States, were used in electrical and heating systems. A 1990 study found that PCBs in the water were also produced by marine shop wastes and ships pumping their bilges while docked.

The Antarctic Sun quoted a professor of developmental and cancer biology at the University of Auckland as saying "the bay has one of the highest toxic concentrations of any body of water on Earth."

Turning basin

Port officials deploy one or more icebreakers each summer, depending upon ice conditions, to cut a circular basin just off Winter Quarters Bay. The basin provides an open area for the cargo ships to depart the ice pier

Ice pier

, swing north, and proceed into a ship channel through McMurdo Sound

McMurdo Sound

. The channel is opened up by icebreakers annually and can range from 8 to 50 nautical miles (92.6 km) in length.

History

Robert Falcon Scott

chose Winter Quarters Bay to winter over during his National Antarctic Discovery Expedition

Discovery Expedition

(1901-1904). The expedition vessel, RRS Discovery

RRS Discovery

The RRS Discovery was the last traditional wooden three-masted ship to be built in Britain. Designed for Antarctic research, she was launched in 1901. Her first mission was the British National Antarctic Expedition, carrying Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their first, successful...

, was ice-locked in the harbour for two years before being freed by explosives on February 14, 1904.

The expedition included explorers Scott, Edward Wilson

Edward Adrian Wilson

Edward Adrian Wilson was a notable English polar explorer, physician, naturalist, painter and ornithologist.-Early life:...

, and Ernest Shackleton

Ernest Shackleton

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, CVO, OBE was a notable explorer from County Kildare, Ireland, who was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration...

's first major attempt to reach the South Pole. The explorers travelled overland to 82°S before turning back. The expedition erected a prefabricated hut at Hut Point overlooking the bay. The hut remains today and is protected as an historic site by the Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand)

Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand)

The Antarctic Heritage Trust was founded in 1987 and is oldest member of the Antarctic Heritage Trust coalition. The AHT-NZ is an independent charitable trust based in Christchurch, New Zealand...

.

Vince's Cross, a wooden cross erected in 1902 to honour Seaman George T. Vince who drowned nearby is located immediately above the hut on a small knoll overlooking the bay at Hut Point. Our Lady of the Snows Shrine, a Madonna statue honouring Richard T. Williams, a Seabee tractor driver who drowned in 1956, is also nearby. McMurdo Station's Williams Field

Williams Field

Williams Field or Willy Field is a United States Antarctic Program airfield in Antarctica. Williams Field consists of two snow runways located on approximately 8 meters of compacted snow, lying on top of 80 meters of ice, floating over 550 meters of water...

is named after the sailor. Moreover, officials erected another monument on the knoll to commemorate Raymond T. Smith, a Navy petty officer killed at Winter Quarters Bay during cargo operations aboard the USNS Southern Cross in February 1982.

Bay water characteristics

Harbor pollution

Turning basin

History

See also