Passengers aboard a scientific research ship stuck in sea ice near the coast of Antarctica are preparing to spend another night on the vessel after plans to evacuate them by helicopter were aborted.
The rescue mission was cancelled in the early hours of Wednesday because of hazardous weather conditions. Stranded passengers began the new year with muted celebrations aboard the MV Akademik Shokalskiy.
The passengers, about 50 scientists, academics and journalists, have been trapped on the vessel in thick pack ice off the coast of Antarctica since Christmas Day.
Several attempts to evacuate the Shokalskiy using icebreakers have been thwarted by the dense sea ice, which is up to 5 metres thick in some places.
Passengers were told a second attempt to rescue them by helicopter would take place on Thursday if there was a break in the heavy rain, strong winds and cloud, which foiled the earlier effort to reach the ship by air.
The rescue helicopter will have to make seven flights to the Shokalskiy in total, ferrying the passengers to a Chinese icebreaker about 20 minutes away by air. The passengers will then board a smaller vessel to take them to an Australian icebreaker, which was 3.2 nautical miles away from the Chinese icebreaker on Wednesday afternoon.
If the plan to rescue them by air fails, a large American icebreaker is about 10 days away and should be able to break through the dense ice floes that thwarted the Chinese and Australian ships.
When it got stuck last week, the Shokalskiy was about two weeks into its month-long journey from Bluff, New Zealand, to Commonwealth Bay, East Antarctica, following in the footsteps of the Antarctic explorer and scientist Douglas Mawson.
Mawson led the original Australasian Antarctic expedition of 1911. The modern incarnation is intended to repeat his wildlife, ocean and weather observations in order to build a picture of how this part of the world has changed in the past 100 years.
The Shokalskiy became stuck in the ice near Cape de la Motte in eastern Antarctica about 1,500 nautical miles from Hobart, in Tasmania, after strong blizzards hit the vessel on Christmas Eve.