We have just landed back in Ushuaia, Argentina (southernmost city in the world) from our exciting Blue World shoot in Antarctica. Our team took a ship over 600 nautical miles from Ushuaia over the Drake Passage (roughest water in the world) to Antarctica for a week of diving and exploring the most remote and hostile place on Earth.
We dove every day in water that ranged from 30 to 34 degrees, using extremely warm drysuits. The highlights of the diving included a school of gigantic jellyfish almost 2 feet across, weird and rare cold water benthic invertebrates, a pair of curious Leopard seals (known to be the most aggressive animal in Antarctica) and even a dive on a shipwreck.
We walked with thousands of penguins and Fur seals, dove under icebergs, and even visited a couple of remote research stations. Fortunately, we enjoyed extremely good weather. The sun was out most of the time and the daytime temperatures peaked above freezing.
All this exciting stuff will be part of the Antarctic segments in the second season of Jonathan Bird's Blue World coming to you in the summer of 2009!
