Polar challenge on Texel

Caspar David Friedrich painted 'Das Eismeer' in 1823/24, in his days a controversial painting depicting a sea of ice in the Arctic, cracking and bulging upwards, and in the midst of it all, a shipwreck that is demolished by ice. I remembered that painting today. Not because of the drama of the painting - it is said that it symbolises "the frail bark of human aspiration crushed by the world's immense and glacial indifference". I remembered the painting due to the magnificent ice floats led away by streams of silty water, the huge cracks that formed in the frozen world around us and the blocks of frozen snow that were scattered over the muddy landscape.

Silt and ice on Zeeburg/De Cocksdorp
- notice the halo around the sun

Where did we go to be impressed by this big white scenery? I set out with the projectleader of research on musselbeds and other interns from IMARES to Zeeburg, close to De Cocksdorp and De Schorren on Texel. We were surprised by snowstorms and myst, and we drove carefully to the spot where we would start our small trip to take samples of musselbeds. After a while the sun broke through and we experienced a beautiful morning on the tidal flats. Soon it was clear that the GPS-spots known to be worth checking for mussels were withheld by the frozen Wadden Sea.

A big crack in the pack ice on Texel Zeeburg/De Cocksdorp

Struggling now and again with the mudflat character of the Wadden Sea at low tide, we moved on. Our wetsuits were very useful, especially when the seawater came up to my waist. I could feel my boots and suit tighten on my body, shrinking by the cold temperature, although I didn't really experience the cold thanks to my thermoregulating clothing beneath my wetsuit. The projectleader decided to pick up heavy equipment installed on the mudflat instead of taking samples; the equipment was definitely frozen over by the unfriendly weather. We took apart the equipment from the platform of poles to bring it back to climate friendly quarters.

We needed to get the equipment back to IMARES
- it was frozen all over

Afterwards, we decided to enjoy the landscape further on, to see if we could discover changes in the scenery and interesting details. You can check the photography documentary below, now that we had time to enjoy it instead of taking those most wanted and unreachable samples of musselbeds.

Chuncks of ice and snow create reflections

The structures of ice and snow remind me of Svalbard

We encountered a big crack as if the body of snow was cut open, torn apart by the fury of the weather and the water. Or is it human-made?

The world of ice breaks open

Even beauty in the detail: cracks in the icestructure

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say. All those small details of ice, air bubbles and structures made me wonder how much more there is to experience and explore...

Bubbles of air get trapped beneath the ice
or break free

 
 





















Some parts of the Wadden Sea were not taken by the soul of ice. Dynamic patterns in the mud were broken by patches of oysters and weed, desperately hugging each other on the shore.

Pacific Oyster in a bulk
drifted from De Schorren

 
 























The variety in the earthly substances was amazing, from white plains to Delta-like designs. Although the fieldwork didn't work out as we expected to, we did enjoy the morning snowstorm, myst and sun in this hostile and almost white environment.

Silt structures and the border of ice in the morning sun