Antarctica - First Glimpse - South Shetland Islands

Our first glimpse of Antarctica! We arrive at the South Shetland Islands - just north of the Antarctic pennisula. We cannot believe we are seeing Antarctica - something only a few people on our planet have done! Beautiful glaciers and snow pack!
SOME INTERESTING ANTARCTICA FACTS1) If Antarctica's ice sheets melted, the worlds oceans would rise by 200 to 210 feet.
2) Antarctica is pushed into the earth by the weight of its ice sheets. If they all melted, it would "spring back" about 1,625 feet.
3) Antarctica is the best place in the world to find meteorites. Dark meteorites show up against the white expanse of ice and snow and don't get covered by vegetation.
4) The cold and dry conditions in the "Dry Valleys" region of Antarctica are so close to those on Mars that NASA did testing there for the Viking mission. It has not rained in the dry valleys for at least 2 million years.
5) One of the biggest icebergs ever (possibly the biggest iceberg ever) broke free from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica in 2000. It was183 miles long and 23 miles wide, with a surface area of 4,250 square miles above water and 10 times bigger below.
6) It has been estimated that during the feeding season in Antarctica, a full-grown blue whale eats about 4 million krill per day (krill are small shrimp-like creatures), that's 4 tons every day for 6 months.
7) Snow falling at the South Pole takes about 100,000 years to "flow" to the coast of Antarctica before it drops off the end as part of an iceberg.
8) Antarctica has a peculiar group of fish called ice fish. They have no red pigment, haemoglobin, in their blood to carry oxygen around. They get by perfectly well without it because the temperature is so low and oxygen dissolves better in cold temperatures. They just have a larger volume of clear blood instead and this gives them an unusually ghostly white colour, particularly their gills.
9) The largest land animal in Antarctica is an insect, a wingless midge, Belgica antarctica, less than 0.5inches long. There are no flying insects (they'd get blown away), just shiny black springtails that hop like fleas and tend to live among penguin colonies.
10) It rarely snows in Antarctica. Instead, windstorms blow snow off the surface of the ice which creates the impression of snowstorms.
11) Antarctica is the windiest place on earth with gusts up to 196mph recorded.
12) Antarctica is the highest continent, with over half of the land over 6,500 feet above sea level. The highest peak on Antarctica is over 11,000 feet.
Thanks Lyle for sharing these facts!