Great stuff, :-: Endor :-: ; keep it coming! I was on the Ioffe in 1998, visiting South Georgia and Antarctic, 22 days. Marvelous! I'll also ask for your permission to fill in a bit for those who wish to go but don't find an asnwer in your comprehensive and really well-thought-out posts (I love the links!) or even some trivia... since you are so admirably filling in the important information.
With my size foot, the uncertainty of onboard footwear and the number of landings and excursions we made, I bought and took my own boots. Mine were lined Nokia boots - the Finns know about cellular phone sand definitely boots, as Nokia is also famous for making Russian military footwear. Sorrell makes very good ones as well - my recommendation is boots that are lined (keep you warm, you can remove the liners and dry them out,) waterproof and at least mid-calf in height (when you make a beach or "wet" landing you want boots high enough water won't get inside your boots, since the water is slightly below freezing,) with at least moderately lugged soles and enough structure you can walk comfortably, since on a landing you will do some walking around. Ice and penguin crap can be slippery...
And in Ushuaia, be sure to stop by Tia Elvira's seafront restaurant at Maipú 349 and try the local fish - "centolla" (cent-OH-yuh) is the local delicious king crab, but they also have black hake and other fish (of course, they have Argentine "parrilla" meats as well.) Foto Santa Maria on the main drag (two blocks up from the seafront Maipú) has a huge variety of decent postcards, in-date film and one hour photo processing.
Little known fact: the Akademik Ioffe was built in Wartsila, Finland, and was named after Avraham Ioffe, a famous Jewish academician in Russia - but they mention his first name anywhere as it was Jewish. The ship was built as an "acoustic reasearch vessel" with high tech listening and analysis devices and was even equipped with semi-cylindridcal "sails" (didn't work well at all) and a sailing sloop (to drop sonobuoys.) The Ioffe was built to listen in to and record the propeller and other sounds of American submarines!
I toured the acoustics centre with an officer - one guy gave me incredibly nasty looks. When I told the Captain, he said it was because the chap was an Afghan veteran, and he hated the idea of the "enemy" - or at least the "ex-enemy" getting a load of some of "his" equipment. I told the Captain I understood, as I was a Vietnam veterna. Next time I saw the chap, he gave me big smiles, a "high five" and warm "tovarich!" Amazing what persoanlizing others can do...