Whale Watching and the Polar Plunge at Mikkelsen Harbour, Antarctica

I'm a swimmer. I'm a Scorpio. Water is basically home. I even sell cruises for a living now so if I’m not on water myself, I’m convincing others to go. I knew from the moment I booked this trip that if we got the chance to do a polar plunge (like all things in Antarctica it was “weather permitting”), to jump into the Southern Ocean, I’d be doing it. The only real question in my head was how uncomfortable it was actually going to be.

But the morning came first, and it belonged to whales. We were in Mikkelsen Harbour on Trinity Island, and this was the day whale sightings really picked up, along with a lot of education about how their behavior.

Birds hanging around whales bubble feeding as seen from onboard Seabourn Venture

The biggest tell for spotting a feeding whale isn't the whale at all. It's the birds! Whales will bubble-feed, blowing a ring of bubbles underwater to corral krill toward the surface, and the second that happens, birds swarm in to grab their own share of the catch. See the birds circling and diving, and there's almost certainly a whale working just beneath them.

Whales down here feed mostly on krill rather than fish, since fish are genuinely scarce this far south, something I'd already noticed firsthand from how little there was to see on the submarine dive. Whaling did real, lasting damage to how comfortable whales are around ships, and that history becomes even more obvious once you head toward South Georgia, but here in Antarctica proper, they seemed completely unbothered by us.

The afternoon belonged to the plunge. Mountains and snow surrounded us on every side, and the mudroom had turned into an actual party before anyone jumped, shots offered before, after, or both, depending on your nerve. I wore a sweatshirt over my robe right up until the last second, because it was still Antarctica, and it was still cold.

Our view for the polar plunge, whale included.

Seabourn runs the plunge off two Zodiacs. You're clipped to a line, someone holds the other end, and you jump. One nice touch, right before you go, you can hand your phone or camera to one of the crew standing by, and they'll record the whole thing for you. My husband decided to cannonball into the water, which makes for a great video, but also more time underwater.

Me - so as a former lifeguard - I’d spent days and days learning how to jump into the water, and land shallow. The goal was so you never lost sight of someone drowning, and the instructors would actually check to see if the hair on the top of your head remained dry.

I wouldn’t quite say I still had THAT level of skill at the jump, but my jump was still fairly shallow, and I was able to lunge for the ladder hanging off of the side of the zodiac as soon as I surfaced.

And that was about all I could do, since the second I hit the water I started shaking uncontrollably, hard enough that pulling myself up the ladder wasn't really an option. That would be where that line I’m clipped to came in handy. The crew member holding it literally yanked me out of the water, and before I knew it I was back on the zodiac, heading back onto the ship.

The second you're out, someone's handing you a towel, wrapping you in your robe, and putting a shot in your hand, and somehow you're just not cold anymore. I have no explanation for it beyond a pure difference in temperature, but it works. One woman on our sailing went back in multiple times just to see how long she could last. That was never going to be me. I hit the water, got out, and called it a life achievement.

The water itself was below freezing, actual sub-zero temperatures, which is possible in the ocean because of how much salt is in it. It was genuinely, completely freezing. It was also a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I would tell anyone considering it to just do it, if only for the chance to say you swam in the same water as the penguins.

I have my entire polar plunge on video, start to finish. I'm not about to post it here, but book an Antarctica trip through me, and maybe I'll show you.