Winter Quarters Bay is a small cove of

McMurdo Sound McMurdo Sound is a sound in Antarctica. It is the southernmost navigable body of water in the world, and is about from the South Pole. Captain James Clark Ross discovered the sound in February 1841, and named it after Lt. Archibald McMurdo o ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

, located due south of

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

at 77°50'S. The harbor is the southernmost port in the

Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is regarded as the second-small ...

and features a floating

ice pier An ice pier or ice wharf is a man-made structure used to assist the unloading of ships in Antarctica. It is constructed by pumping seawater into a contained area and allowing the water to freeze. By repeating this procedure several times, additio ...

for summer cargo operations. The bay is approximately 250m wide and long, with a maximum depth of 33m. The name Winter Quarters Bay refers to Robert Falcon Scott's National Antarctic

Discovery Expedition The ''Discovery'' Expedition of 1901–1904, known officially as the British National Antarctic Expedition, was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since the voyage of James Clark Ross sixty years earlier (1839–184 ...

(1901–04) which wintered at the site for two seasons.Discovery Hut, Hut Point," New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust
/ref> A small peninsula on the southern tip of

Ross Island Ross Island is an island formed by four volcanoes in the Ross Sea near the continent of Antarctica, off the coast of Victoria Land in McMurdo Sound. Ross Island lies within the boundaries of Ross Dependency, an area of Antarctica claimed by New ...

forms the natural harbor at Winters Quarters Bay which offers shelter for ships. The harbor has served the few ships able to penetrate McMurdo Sound's pack ice ever since the

(1901–04). Today, two ships assisted by an

icebreaker An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters, and provide safe waterways for other boats and ships. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller ...

annually arrive at Winter Quarters Bay with fuel and cargo to re-supply the adjacent U.S.

McMurdo Station McMurdo Station is a United States Antarctic research station on the south tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the Unit ...

at . The cargo operations also support nearby

Scott Base Scott Base is a New Zealand Antarctica, Antarctic research station at Pram Point on Ross Island near Mount Erebus in New Zealand's Ross Dependency territorial claim. It was named in honour of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Royal Navy, RN, leader ...

and field stations throughout Antarctica. More than 50 years of activity at

has severely polluted the bay."Thaw puts husky hazards in the path of Scott's successors:
Melting Antarctic ice unveils decades of rubbish buried on Earth's cleanest continent," The Guardian. November 17, 2001. Decades of pumping thousands of gallons of raw sewage generated by McMurdo residents directly into the bay came to an end in 2003 when a treatment plant became operational.

Bay water characteristics

A shallow submarine ridge marks the mouth of Winter Quarters Bay. Water depths in the bay range from 13m along the ridge to a maximum depth of 33m at the bay's center."Comprehensive Characterization Report on Winter Quarters Bay, McMurdo Station, Antarctica,"
National Science Foundation report by Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory; Environmental Assessment Technologies; and Lockheed Martin Idaho Technologies Report. January 1997. The submarine ridge and Hut Point Peninusula temper the effect of

ocean currents. Current meters indicate such minimal currents that the bay can be considered essentially stagnant. In addition the submarine ridge tends to provide a buffer against icebergs moving into the bay and damaging the

and shoreline. Physical barriers created by such land forms have also concentrated toxic pollutants introduced into the bay from operations at

, according to a 1997 U.S. National Science Foundation sponsored study. The combination of sun and sufficiently warm air temperatures a few days during midsummer can produce snowmelt on adjacent

. The subsequent runoff is largely diverted by ditches and culverts into McMurdo Sound, rather than the bay, according to the National Science Foundation report.

Harbor pollution

Scientific and support operations at McMurdo Station, beginning with its construction in 1955, have led to severely polluted waters at Winter Quarters Bay. Until 1981,

residents simply towed their garbage out to the sea ice and let nature take its course. The garbage sunk to the sea floor when the ice broke up in the spring, according to news reports. A 2001 survey of the seabed at Winter Quarters Bay revealed 15 vehicles, 26 shipping containers, and 603 fuel drums, as well as some 1,000 miscellaneous items dumped on an area of some . Findings by scuba divers were reported in the State of the Environment Report, a New Zealand sponsored study."Thaw puts husky hazards in the path of Scott's successors:
Melting Antarctic ice unveils decades of rubbish buried on Earth's cleanest continent," ''The Guardian''. November 17, 2001. Decades of pumping thousands of gallons of raw sewage generated by McMurdo residents directly into the bay came to an end in 2003 when a treatment plant became operational. In addition, sediments in the bay are contaminated with PCBs, metals, and hydrocarbon fuels. A January 2005 edition of the Antarctic Sun, a U.S. National Science Foundation publication, noted that a former landfill located on a hill above the bay is considered to have been a primary source of the fuel and PCB contaminants. PCBs, now banned in the United States, were used in electrical and heating systems. A 1990 study found that PCBs in the water were also produced by marine shop wastes and ships pumping their bilges while docked. The Antarctic Sun quoted a professor of developmental and cancer biology at the University of Auckland as saying "the bay has one of the highest toxic concentrations of any body of water on Earth."

Turning basin

Port officials deploy one or more icebreakers each summer, depending upon ice conditions, to cut a circular basin just off Winter Quarters Bay. The basin provides an open area for the cargo ships to depart the

, swing north, and proceed into a ship channel through

. The channel is opened up by icebreakers annually and can range from 8 to in length.

History

Robert Falcon Scott Captain Robert Falcon Scott, , (6 June 1868 – c. 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the ''Discovery'' expedition of 1901–1904 and the ill-fated ''Terra Nov ...

chose Winter Quarters Bay to winter over during his National Antarctic

(1901–1904). The expedition vessel, RRS ''Discovery'', was ice-locked in the harbour for two years before being freed by explosives on February 14, 1904."A long life at sea: specially designed for Antarctic conditions, ''Discovery'' served Scott's expedition well and made it back to England in one piece, docking in Plymouth on September 15, 1904. But its years of service didn't end there and it went on to have a distinguished career;" The South Polar Times. Cited in ASAP, Campion Interactive Publishing Ltd. January 1, 2003. The expedition included explorers Scott, Edward Wilson, and

Ernest Shackleton Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of ...

's first major attempt to reach the South Pole. The explorers travelled overland to 82°S before turning back."Hard Cold Facts"
Antarctic Sun. October 20, 2002. The expedition erected a prefabricated hut at

Hut Point A hut is a small dwelling, which may be constructed of various local materials. Huts are a type of vernacular architecture because they are built of readily available materials such as wood, snow, ice, stone, grass, palm leaves, branches, hid ...

overlooking the bay. The hut remains today and is protected as an historic site by the

Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand) The Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand) was founded in 1987 and is the oldest member of the Antarctic Heritage Trust coalition. The AHT-NZ is an independent charitable trust based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was created to care for sites ...

. Vince's Cross, a wooden cross erected in 1902 to honour Seaman George T. Vince who drowned nearby is located immediately above the hut on a small knoll overlooking the bay at Hut Point. Our Lady of the Snows Shrine, a Madonna statue honouring Richard T. Williams, a Seabee tractor driver who drowned in 1956, is also nearby. McMurdo Station's

Williams Field Williams Field or Willy Field is a United States Antarctic Program airfield in Antarctica. Williams Field consists of two snow runways located on approximately 8 meters (25 ft) of compacted snow, lying on top of 8–10 ft of ice, flo ...

is named after the sailor. Moreover, officials erected another monument on the knoll to commemorate Raymond T. Smith, a Navy petty officer killed at Winter Quarters Bay during cargo operations aboard the USNS Southern Cross in February 1982.

Notes

References

Antarctic Sun.National Science Foundation.
{{Ross Island Bays of Ross Island United States Antarctic Program Ports and harbours of the Ross Dependency