Who would have thought that melting sea ice can be so pretty? We went back to the ice egde of the Chukchi, roughly at 71º17' North and 162º32' West on an overcast day. The ice was very different from a few days ago: the heavy winds and swell had broken the big shoals into lots of smaller pieces, with bits floating around everywhere. This time, we could not navigate our inflatable boat into it, but had to skirt around the edges. Wildlife was, sadly, absent and thus I concentrated on the weird and wonderful, sometimes crystalline shapes of the decaying sea ice.
