“I felt like I was in a National Geographic show,” said Dr. Melinda Butler as she watched orcas swim across the cold waters to flip penguins into the air and swim around them “like a cat with a mouse.”
In December 2025, Jones College Biology instructor Dr. Butler took a trip to Antarctica to encounter the wildlife previously only seen in textbooks.
Butler began her journey on Dec. 16, 2025 to get to the Antarctic Peninsula, the closest point of Antarctica mainland to South America. She left Gulfport, Mississippi, for Houston, then flew to Buenos Aires, where Butler and her husband spent the afternoon and night, before their next flight.
“My husband, Jody, and I have never taken any extended vacations,” said Butler. “In fact, [we’ve taken] few vacations at all in the past 20 years.”
This trip had been in the works for three years, when Butler had the idea of taking a big vacation to Europe, but her husband was not interested in any place suggested.
However, inspiration struck. A book on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 expedition trip to Antarctica and a show on researchers drilling through the ice of Antarctica gave Butler the winning idea.
“One night, sitting in the living room watching TV, I finally said [to my husband], ‘what do you think about Antarctica?’ and he said, ‘that might be interesting.’”
On the morning of Dec. 18, Butler and her husband flew to Ushuaia, the very southernmost tip of Argentina, where they boarded a Viking cruise ship.
To get to the Antarctic Peninsula, the cruise ship sailed 48 hours through the Beagle Channel and the Drake Passage. Notorious for having one of the strongest ocean currents, the Drake Passage has been reported to have waves as high as 65 feet.
In fact, Butler was told the previous trip made by the cruise ship made most people seasick.
“They call it the Drake Lake or Drake Shake,” said Butler. “We were on the perfect trip; we got Drake Lake both ways.”
On Dec. 21, the cruise ship arrived near Brabant Island on the north side of Antarctica, where Butler first saw Koch Glacier, a four-nautical-mile-long jagged blue ice glacier.
“It’s a beautiful glacier, and it is massive,” said Butler. “The bluer the ice is, the more compact and less air that’s in it. For the little pieces [of ice], you could hear them melt, with air pockets popping; it was like [the sound of] eating Rice Krispies.”
Butler described the scenery as having clear dark blue waters, fog rolling over massive peaks and the sun hiding behind them but never setting. Hints of green life exist only as grass, mosses and snow algae that could be green or red.
Curious penguins could be seen leaping through the water towards the cruise ship, with orcas tailing behind them. They spotted Weddell and Leopard seals, and three penguin species were seen once landings into Antarctica were made.
On the first day, Butler said she struggled to walk in the clothing required for landings. She wore wool long underwear, waterproof pants, boots and a down jacket inside a waterproof jacket.
From the cruise ship, passengers slid onto the front of 15-feet-long rubber boats called Zodiacs, with engines attached. Passengers could not stand on the boats. Instead, once on land, passengers had to flip their feet over the side of the boat to stand up.
No more than 100 people at a time could be on land, and the pathway the guides formed was the only path that could be traversed. They weren’t allowed to touch anything, including the snow, rocks, grass and penguins.
“Sometimes the penguins would come out like they were coming toward you to visit,” said Butler. She saw the Gentoo, Chinstrap and Adélie penguin species, expressing that her favorite was the Adélies.
“They were just so cute; you really just wanted to pick one up and take it home with you,” said Butler.
This trip made Butler aware of the amount of life that can live in the coldest of regions. She plans to include pictures and organisms she learned about in her teaching materials.
“Antarctica is a beautiful, wild place, extremely bleak in some ways,” Butler said. “But I would go back in a heartbeat.”
After not taking extended vacations for 20 years, Butler is turning a new chapter in her life. She hopes to travel a lot more in the future, already planning another trip to eastern Antarctica to see the emperor penguins as well as other cruise ship adventures for next summer.
“It’s time to do other things,” said Butler. “[Antarctica] was amazing, and there’s nothing I can tell you to prepare for it. I’ve read these books, I’ve seen these shows, but it’s not the same as being there and experiencing it.”
Any questions for Butler regarding the trip can be sent to her email at Melinda.butler@jcjc.edu.
by Destiny Velasco
