Endurance frozen in the ice, 1914-1917. Frank Hurley
Platinum print.
The Endurance was an exploration ship that became trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea off the coast of Antarctica in 1915. It was Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The ship was squeezed by the ice for ten months before being crushed, but the crew all survived.
Have you ever seen the Spectacled Eider (Somateria fischeri)? During breeding season, males sport green plumage in a pattern that's reminiscent of glasses. While this doesn't make their vision sharper, it does help males stand out from the crowd.For the rest of the year, they revert to mottled-brown plumage, similar to females, which have more subdued spectacles year-round. This duck is unique in that it lives in the frigid high Arctic. It sustains itself on a diet of mostly mollusks and crustaceans, diving to pluck prey from the ocean floor.
Photo: Olaf Oliviero Riemer, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons