{"id":505,"date":"2011-02-08T21:58:20","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T12:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seanmisen.com\/?p=505"},"modified":"2011-02-08T21:58:20","modified_gmt":"2011-02-08T12:58:20","slug":"drift-ice-on-the-okhotsk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/uncategorized\/drift-ice-on-the-okhotsk\/","title":{"rendered":"Drift Ice on the Okhotsk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every winter, freshwater from the Amur River in the Russian Far East flows into the Sea of Okhotsk and freezes.\u00a0 The Sea of Okhotsk is a cold ocean year round, cut off from the Sea of Japan and the Pacific by Sakhalin, Hokkaido, the Kurils, and Kamchatka.\u00a0 There is not a great deal of inflow or outflow of currents.\u00a0 As such, the freshwater from the Amur river holds greater sway over the composition of the Sea of Okhotsk than most rivers do over their eventual oceans.\u00a0 I’m no scientist, but as I understand it, the less dense fresh water from the Amur tends to stay on or near the surface of the Okhotsk, lowering the salinity of the water and hence raising its freezing point (saltwater has a lower freezing point than freshwater.)\u00a0 This water conglomerates into large pieces of ice, which ride the winds of the Okhotsk like icebergs, a fluid mass of ice that is often pushed south into the coast of Hokkaido.\u00a0 It is here that you can hop on an icebreaking tour boat, or simply walk to the beach to see an expanse of ice extending toward the horizon.\u00a0 This is at 44 degrees latitude, the same as the Oregon coast or Mediterranean coast of France.\u00a0 Hard to imagine, but have a look.<\/p>\n

This January 30th photo of Yoshie and I links to a smugmug gallery.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The video below was the first time I’ve ever tried riding a piece of drift ice.\u00a0 It was dizzying but exhilarating. Go to YouTube to watch in HD.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Sidenote: This is my 100th post!\u00a0 It only took me four years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every winter, freshwater from the Amur River in the Russian Far East flows into the Sea of Okhotsk and freezes.\u00a0 The Sea of Okhotsk is a cold ocean year round, cut off from the Sea of Japan and the Pacific by Sakhalin, Hokkaido, the Kurils, and Kamchatka.\u00a0 There is not a great deal of inflow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}