The blue color in some of the Antarctic ice was truly a sight to see. I’ve heard the term “ice blue” all my life and I’ve always wondered where the term came from. For example, “ice blue aqua velva” after shave lotion, I used to wonder why was it called ice blue.

The science is the same as with why water sometimes looks blue. It has to do with light and our perceptions of certain bands of light and all that. Our expedition crew said that it was from perfectly formed ice with an absence of air bubbles. They said it was usually found in the old ice that was very compacted. Another expedition staff member got upset with that explanation and told us that the ice didn’t have to be old to be blue, just very dense and lacking oxygen. I asked her how ice might get to be very dense and lack air bubbles or oxygen and she said that it was usually from the snow and ice building up over many years in glaciers and due to the weight and movement down the mountains. In other words, usually the old ice was the very blue ice.

I’ve already sent you a few pictures of some blue ice, so I’m going to include a few of the more unusual of my ice blue pictures.

The first photo is of a glacial mountainside and the whole mountain was tinted with a bluish light.

The second photo is an iceberg but not with that bright blue ice, but rather with a bluish tint to the whole berg.

The third photo is a glacier we were passing which had that deep blue color in the interior of the glacier.