Dory takes you along on a day in her life aboard the Ocean Victory as it makes its way around the Antarctic peninsula. She writes:
Hi! My name is Dory Raterman, and I am a student studying both Wildlife Conservation and Marine Fish Conservation at Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University. In January 2024, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Antarctica aboard Albatros Expedition’s Ocean Victory ship with AUIP. Let me take you along on one of the most exciting days aboard the ship.
Our day starts off waking up to the chime of the boat’s intercom. Shelli Ogilvy, the head guide for our boat, begins to read us the day’s announcements. Since we are in Antarctica, there is no Wi-Fi, no cell service, and no way for us passengers to access the internet. Shelli’s morning announcements give us the weather, the temperature outside, our location, and the activities and lectures taking place today – all the important things for us to know that we can’t look up on our own.
It’s important to pay attention to Shelli, since we often don’t know what activities or expeditions are taking place that day until the morning of. Antarctica is a fragile and unpredictable environment, so our planned activities or locations can be changed at any moment. This specific day, we are taking a morning zodiac cruise around Leith Cove to hopefully find some wildlife and to take a look at the incredible geological features of the Antarctic Peninsula. The Shackleton Lounge, located on the fifth floor of the ship, will host a lecture on the different species of whales in the cove following our expedition. And finally, in the afternoon, we get to do something we’ve all been waiting for the entire trip: the polar plunge at Paradise Bay.
The MV Ocean Victory expedition ship in Antarctica
A chinstrap penguin rests next to a sleeping leopard seal
Following Shelli’s morning announcements, my roommates and I get dressed and head upstairs to the Beagle Restaurant for breakfast. We eat with the rest of our student group, and afterwards everyone heads back downstairs to our respective rooms and gets dressed for our zodiac cruise. Eventually, the intercom calls our group down to the mudroom where we put on our snow boots and life jackets before finally piling into the zodiacs. The zodiacs are small pontoon boats, each one fitting about ten passengers and one guide. As soon as everyone is seated, our guide starts the engine and we jet across the cove. The sun is out, the day is beautiful, and it’s fairly warm out – for Antarctica. We see breathtaking views of the mountains, follow pods of humpback whales, and even catch a rare moment where a chinstrap penguin walks right up next to a leopard seal snoozing on an iceberg. How the penguin survived that, I still have no clue.
Once our morning expedition has finished, we pretty much have free range to choose how to spend our time until lunch. I attend the lecture on whales, and afterwards meet up with my module group to work on our project. As a part of this study abroad, our student group is split into four separate groups, each actively working on a different hands-on module the whole time we are aboard the ship. My group is researching ecotourism, a type of travel that aims to minimize negative environmental impacts. The ship we are aboard, the Ocean Victory, works to ensure that their trips to the seventh continent leave as little of an impact on the fragile ecosystem as possible. My group’s job is to research and learn more about Albatros Expedition’s procedures, and eventually analyze how sustainable a trip like ours really is. While we work, the captain and crew have set sail and are taking us to our next destination, Paradise Bay.
Eventually, the ship comes to a stop. Shelli’s voice over the intercom announces our arrival in the bay and calls our group to meet down in the mudroom for the polar plunge. We put on our bathing suits and run downstairs to find that the mudroom has been transformed from a typical locker room into a celebration. Music is playing through the speakers, the staff is dancing, and the passengers are all lined up, excitedly waiting to jump off the ship into the icy water. I am no exception; the polar plunge is what most of us students have been waiting for. We all wait our turn, cheering for those that have gone before us as they show back up, dripping wet and shivering, but smiling and laughing nonetheless. Finally my turn comes. I step out onto a stationary zodiac, and the staff ties a harness around my waist. As I step up onto the pontoon, I first give a small wave to the photographer taking photos, then jump. To say that the water was cold is an understatement. There are bits of iceberg floating by when I pop back up to the surface, and the water is so cold that it literally takes my breath away. And yet, after I swim back to the zodiac and am wrapped in a towel, I can’t help but want to go again. There really is nothing quite like a polar plunge in Antarctica.
After warming up in the hot tubs on the ship’s Midnight Sun Pool Deck, we eventually head back downstairs and get changed for dinner. We eat, and shortly after it is time for our evening debrief of announcements in the Shackleton Lounge. Much like Shelli’s morning announcements over the intercom, this is our time to find out information we can look up, like our planned destinations and activities for the following day. As Shelli is discussing the weather conditions for the next day, movement outside the windows catch my eye. Swimming all around the boat are the most whales I have ever seen. As I am looking closer, trying to identify exactly what species they are, Shelli concludes her daily debrief by saying she has some good news for us: “If you look out the windows, we have come across a super-pod of orca whales!” This was great news. It was the first time any of us had seen orca during our trip, much less a pod with about 80+ of them. Everyone ran upstairs to the Observation Deck, where we spend the rest of the night watching the whales swim. The ship’s captain even spun the boat around in the bay multiple times, just so we could stay with the pod. It was an unforgettable moment to end an unforgettable day.
Passengers gather outside the Observation Deck to watch the orca super-pod
This was just one of many incredible days I was fortunate enough to experience while in Antarctica. As someone studying the conservation sciences, my study abroad trip was important to both my personal and educational goals. I was able to not just learn about wildlife and their interactions with their environment, but also see them first-hand in an incredibly unique ecosystem. I studied just how impactful human interactions are with fragile environments, and discussed sustainable practices and their importance for the future. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was having fun exploring and experiencing the coldest, most unique continent on Earth.
