Ililussat, Greenland, by Sea

An early morning view of the ice choked fjord.

Our zodiac navigator and guide, David Reid.

Massive blocks of ice that have broken off the Greenland ice sheet.

Speaks for itself...

Tom Cochrane in orange launches his drone.

Amazingly gulls still manage to live in this frozen environment.

Beautiful pristine ice...

set to flow out of the fjord and into the Atlantic.

Friday, September 15^th.  Ililussat, Greenland

Today we were going to visit probably the signature location on this trip: Ililussat and the Jacobshavn Glacier and the fjord full of ice. We were all excited about it and it did not disappoint. I have too many photos for one post so I will divide it by the sea portion and the land portion.

We had an early morning start. A quick breakfast and then the three of us loaded into a zodiac piloted by David Reid with 7 others. He took us on a 90-minute journey through the hundreds of icebergs in this fjord. Yesterday I was complaining about the lack of sunshine and wow! Today we got a totally blue sky and bright sunshine which lit the icebergs up like crystals. It was hard to stop taking photos. Ilulissat Icefjord is located 250 km north of the Arctic Circle and runs west 40 km from the Greenland ice sheet to Disko Bay just south of the town of Ilulissat. The Ilulissat Icefjord was declared a UNESCO world Heritage Site in 2004 because of its natural beauty and the importance of the fast-moving Jakobshavn Glacier in developing the current scientific understanding of anthropogenic (man-made) climate change. The fjord contains the Jakobshavn Glacier, the most productive glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. The glacier flows at a rate of 20–35 metres per day, resulting in around 20 billion tonnes of icebergs calved off and passing out of the fjord every year. Icebergs breaking from the glacier are often so large, up to a kilometer (3,300 ft) in height, that they are too tall to float down the fjord and lie stuck on the bottom of its shallower areas, sometimes for years, until they are broken up by the force of the glacier and icebergs further up the fjord. On breaking up the icebergs emerge into the open sea and initially travel north up the west coast of Greenland with ocean currents before turning south and running into the Atlantic Ocean. Larger icebergs typically do not melt until they reach 40-45 degrees north - further south than the United Kingdom and level with New York City.