Jakarta –
These are waters that both inspire fear and inspire sailors. The highest waves are also the fiercest storms it has.
Citing CNN, Wednesday (28/2/2024), the area covers 965 km of open sea. It has some of the harshest conditions on the planet, including an equally inhospitable land of snow and ice waiting at the end.
“The most feared sea in the world, and rightly so,” wrote Alfred Lansing about explorer Ernest Shackleton’s 1916 voyage across it in a small lifeboat.
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It is the Drake Passage, which connects the southern tip of the South American continent with the northernmost point of the Antarctic Peninsula.
It was once home to explorers and seals. Today, the Drake Passage is a dauntingly challenging location for the growing number of travelers to Antarctica.
To cross the Drake Passage it takes up to 48 hours. For many, being able to pride themselves on surviving the “Drake shake” is part of the appeal of going to the white continent.
But what causes these “shakes”, which can cause waves almost 15 meters high to hit the ship? And how do sailors navigate the wildest waters on the planet?
For oceanographers, it turns out, the Drake Passage is a fascinating place because of what happens beneath the surface of those turbulent waters. And for ship captains, this is a challenge that must be faced with the right amount of fear.
The strongest hurricane in the world
With a width of almost 1,000 km and a depth of up to 6,000 meters, the Drake Passage is a very large body of water. For us, it is. For the planet as a whole, not so.
The Antarctic Peninsula, where the tourists visit, isn’t even the real Antarctica. It is a peninsula that tapers until it reaches the southern tip of South America.
This creates a pinch point effect, with water squeezed between two land masses, oceans surging through the gap between the two continents.
“This is the only place in the world where winds can push across the globe without hitting land. Because land tends to dampen storms,” said oceanographer Alexander Brearley, head of open oceans at the British Antarctic Survey.
Winds tend to blow from west to east and latitudes 40 to 60 are known for strong winds. Therefore, they were nicknamed the “roaring forties,” “angry fifties” and “screaming sixties.”
However, the wind is slowed by land. That’s why Atlantic storms tend to hit Ireland and the UK (as Hurricane Isha did in January which caused havoc, and sent planes flying to different countries), and then weaken as the storm continues eastward onto the European continent.
With no land to slow it down at Drake’s latitudes, the winds can hurtle across the globe, gathering speed and crashing into ships.
“In the middle of the Drake Passage, the wind might blow over thousands of kilometers to where you are,” Brearley said.
“Kinetic energy is converted from wind into waves, and forms storm waves. These waves can reach up to 15 meters, or,” he said.
But before you worry too much, know that the average wave height at Drake is lower, four to five meters. That’s still double what you’ll find on the Atlantic, for comparison.
And it’s not just the wind that makes the water rough, the Drake is basically one big wave of water.
“The Southern Ocean is generally very windy [tetapi] at Drake, you’re literally sandwiched between Antarctica and the southern hemisphere,” he added.
“This intensifies the storm when the storm comes.” He calls it the “channelling effect.”
Drake Passage (Foto: CNN)
Then there is the speed of the thrashing water. The Drake is part of the world’s most powerful ocean currents, with flows of up to 5,300 million cubic feet per second.
Wedged in a narrow passage, the current increased, moving from west to east, Brearley said that on the surface, the current was not very noticeable, only a few knots.
So you won’t feel it on the boat. “But that means you’ll move a little slower,” he said. For oceanographers, he said, Drake is “an interesting place.”
This is home to what he calls seamounts below the surface and large currents flowing through a (relatively) narrow passage cause waves to break them underwater.
These “internal waves,” as he calls them, create whirlpools that carry cooler water from the depths of the oceans to higher altitudes, a process important for the planet’s climate.
“It’s not just churning at the surface, although obviously that’s what you feel most, but it’s actually churning all the way down into the water column,” said Brearley, who regularly traverses the Drake on research vessels.
Does he feel afraid? “I don’t think I’ve ever really been scared, but it can be quite unpleasant in terms of how rough the waves are,” he says honestly.
Fear begets fear
Another important thing that makes Drake Passage so scary is our fear of Drake himself.
Brearley points out that before the Panama Canal opened in 1914, ships sailing from Europe to the west coast of America had to turn around Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America and then along the Pacific coast.
“Let’s say you’re shipping goods from western Europe to California. You have to drop it off in New York and travel across the US, or you have to turn around,” he said.
Not only large cargo ships, passenger ships also make the same route.
There is even a monument at the tip of Cape Horn, in memory of the more than 10,000 sailors who are believed to have died crossing it.
“The routes between the southern part of South Africa and Australia, or Australia or New Zealand to Antarctica, don’t really lie on major shipping routes,” Brearley said.
“The reason why this passage was so feared for centuries was because the Drake was a passage through which ships had to pass. Another part [dari Samudra Selatan] can be avoided,” he added.
Watch the Video “The Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets Are Melting 3 Times Faster”
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(msl/wsw)
2024-02-28 15:00:31
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