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COULOIR CLIFFS, GRANITE HARBOR


Couloir Cliffs are granite cliffs, three miles long and from thirty to sixty meters high, at the east side of Avalanche Bay in Granite Harbor, Victoria Land (lattitude 77°01'S; longitude:162°48'E). That's a diver field camp pitched on the frozen ocean near that base of Couloir Cliffs.

Couloir Cliffs were named by the Granite Harbor Geological Party, led by the geologist Griffith Taylor, of Robert Scott's British Antarctic Expedition (1910-13), because these cliffs have numerous chimneys and couloirs (a mountainside gorge). In summer 1911-1912, Taylor led a four-man field party on a survey of Victoria Land and finished their Granite Harbor work in the second week of January 1912.


Steep rock walls underwater at Couloir Cliffs are coated with ice giving the appearance of an underwater ice waterfall. The bottom is fifteen feet deep next to the icefall in this picture and covered with rocks and boulders and anchor ice.


The exposed rock topside soaks up warmth from the sun, melting the covering snow. This underwater ice cliff may be formed from this meltwater migrating through permeable rock and freezing when it encounters cold seawater, or it may be formed from a very cold underwater rock mass freezing seawater.


A huge ice mound hung down from the sea ice ceiling and touched bottom. The underside of the sea ice ceiling is not always flat; it can be mounded and there can be scattered stalactites.


The sea urchin Sterechinus neumayeri is a ubiquitous scavenger in shallow water here at the Couloir Cliffs icefalls. The urchins are in right foreground of this photo. Animals trapped in the frozen icefall are a food source. Nearby there was a long nemertean worm frozen in place on the icefall suggesting that it had been crawling along when meltwater streamed down over it and froze it in place. It was a frozen meal awaiting the arrival of the urchins.



The Sterechinus neumayeri urchins look for food on the bottom and up on the icefall itself. The brown color of the icefall is due to diatoms which the urchins scrape off and eat.

Text ©Peter Brueggeman. Photographs ©Norbert Wu. Photographs may not be used in any form without the express written permission of Norbert Wu. Norbert Wu no longer grants permission for uncompensated use of his photos under any circumstances whatsoever; want more info?