It's 9.30pm in the evening of Friday 5th July 2025 and we have just set sail after an interesting day in Nuuk. We have a day at sea tomorrow en route to Kimmirut, Canada crossing the Davis Strait and we are in for a rough ride. The Silver Endeavour is already rolling, and we are only two hours into a 36-hour transit. We do have an extra hours sleep tonight having adjusted the clocks back by one hour.
The Zodiac cruise this afternoon was an interesting lesson in geology. The rocks in Greenland, and especially West Greenland, are some of the oldest on the planet at 2.8 billion years. The geological term for the rock formations we were viewing is 'gneiss'. Wikipedia tells me this is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock, formed by high-temperature and pressure that typically results in a striated texture of alternating darker and lighter coloured bands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gneiss
The first photo of a boulder left by a retreating glacier shows the striations in striking detail. I took this photo a year ago on a previous expedition cruise to Greenland aboard Silver Wind.
Overhead many Black Backed and Glaucus Gulls were to be spotted as well as Ravens and some Zodiacs were lucky enough to see a White-Tailed Eagle. I have been privileged to see these magnificent birds of prey in Alaska, Norway and Fort William, Scotland so I was not too disappointed at missing them on this Zodiac Cruise. What we did see was this huge Black Backed Gull posing for photos.
The last photo is of a group of Long Tailed Ducks. A description of this duck together with clearer photos can be found at: https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/long-tailed-duck
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