Whales and vistas

Whales and vistas 

Today was our last day in South Georgia.  Over night and into the early morning, we moved from the northeast side of the island to the southwest side and into King Haakon Bay, planning to go ashore at Peggety Bluffs.  During the morning we saw three humpback whales swimming together.  Two of them showed us their flukes and one of them did a full breach.  The Haakon Bay has several glaciers and several high snow covered mountains, directly rising from turquoise water.  It was absolutely beautiful.  We thought it was even more spectacular than the Swiss Alps.  The weather for the day was as wonderful as the scenery — the sun was out and temperature was about 45F.  It was a sunscreen day.

We rode zodiacs to the beach and started on a hike.  Unlike previous days the beach was not littered with elephant seals nor penguins (there were a few of each).  We hiked up on scree to a ridge that over looked the bay.  Rather than trying to go back down the scree slope, we decide to slide down a snow covered slope instead.  We continued to hike around the area looking at the wildlife and climbing up another ridge.  It was just wonderful to just stand on top of the ridge and take in the magnificent vistas.  The peacefulness of the scene was enhanced by the elephant seals, who today seemed to want to sunbathe rather than engage in continual (noisy)sparring by the males. 

Once we reluctantly returned to the ship, (we were some of the last few to do so), there was a polar plunge.  Anyone who wanted to jump, dive, or cannon-ball into the bay from one of the zodiacs tethered to the ship.  Katharine opted to do the plunge while Kevin photographed the experience.  

We are now embarked on 2.5 days at sea, fighting a NW wind and trying to evade a large storm, to get back to the Falkland Islands, where we will spend Friday. Days at sea are full of educational lectures and time on the bridge scanning for whales, albatrosses and other seabirds.

Albatross and waterfalls

November 4

Our luck with the weather ran out today, and we had a very misty/foggy/rainy/windy day, although still rather mild (7C). Our morning was spent at Stromness, a former whaling and ship repair center. It is also the location that Shackleton reached, after hiking across South Georgia, to find help of the men he had left on Elephant Island.   The last piece of his trek was to rappel down a partially frozen waterfall... so we hiked to that waterfall today. This was the last two miles of the 36 hour, basically non-stop trek Shackleton made over the mountains that run the spine of South Georgia. We also participated in BioBlitz, a citizen science effort connected to iNaturalist, to record everything we saw on the hike.  Since it was so rainy and windy, it somewhat forced us to focus on, and photograph, all the different plants, lichens, mosses, etc that we saw along the way... a very interesting and different way to hike. The rain made it difficult to photograph some of the birds because the.camera wanted to focus on the water droplets on the lens.

In the afternoon we visited Prion Island, a nesting location for wandering albatross.  Access to the island is strictly controlled by the government.  Permits are required and a maximum of 50 people can be on the island at a time.  Ironically, given how much wind we had experienced throughout the day (including our trip there with waves crashing over the bow of the ship), it was so calm at Prion Island that we saw no adult albatrosses in the air, but we did get to see four albatross chicks of differing ages. Albatross take up to two years to choose a mate, and then after the chicks hatch the parents spend 13 months raising the chick to the point of fledging.  There are estimated to be only 30,000 wandering albatross left in the world; their numbers are declining because rogue fishing boats still use long line trawling, which can entrain and drown albatross in the lines. 

Prion Island also is home to nesting gentoo penguins, giant petrels and the South Georgia pipit, a tiny songbird which weighs 1/17th the weight of an albatross egg! Both the albatross and the pipit have found ways to survive in a cold an unforgiving climate. 

The image of the wandering albatross chick is not great because of the dense fog.

Penguins X 4

Title: Penguin x 4

November 3:  Cooper Bay and St. Andrew’s Bay

After more typical South Georgia weather conditions yesterday, we returned to atypical conditions: warm (4 degrees Celsius), bright sunshine, and calm seas.  In other words, the weather was outstanding.  After breakfast we headed out on Zodiac tours* of Cooper Bay. Cooper Bay is a nesting location for four kinds of penguins: King, gentoo, chinstrap, and macaroni.  We were quite excited about being able to see the chinstrap and macaroni penguins for the first time.

Our first location on the tour was the macaroni penguin breeding area.  While we were observing our flightless friends, a leopard seal came near our Zodiac...well, not only near, but swam around and underneath it. After these encounters, we zipped across to the opposite side of the bay to see chinstrap penguins.  Here we got to see penguins entering and exiting the water.  In amongst the chinstrap penguins were three king penguins. Why they were there and why they had not noticed they were different than all the others, we do not know.  

Another beach was loaded with elephant seals and fur seas as well as having king and gentoo penguins.  We did not spend anytime observing that beach because we would be visiting king penguins later in the day.  However, near this beach were nesting South Georgia shags.  They have amazing blue eyes.  We also saw the nesting area for light mantled albatross, elegant birds that fly in parallel with their mates at the end of courtship. 

After lunch the ship relocated from Cooper Bay to St. Andrew’s Bay, which has the largest king penguin colony in South Georgia, estimated to be over 300,000.  Frequently, the water is too rough to try to land Zodiacs on the beaches, but in keeping with our good luck, the water was fairly calm.  We planned to go on a hike that would take us to a ridge overlooking the massive penguin colony. However, a fast moving and rather deep stream prevented us from doing that.  Instead, we hiked up and back to the Heaney glacier (the source of the aforementioned stream). The penguin colony stretched the entire length of our hike, about one and one half miles one way.  Much of the terrain was covered with feathers from molting penguins. After our hike, we took a short Zodiac tour along the beach to observe the elephant seals that lined the beach and the central part of the penguin colony. It was another great day in South Georgia.

*A Zodiac tour is when 8 to 10 people get into a Zodiac and are taken around to see different locations and stuff.

Elephant seals and icebergs

November 2: Gold Cove and Larsen’s Harbor

Today’s adventures began before dawn, with a zodiac ride to the beach of Gold Harbor before sunup (4:00am).  The plan was to watch the sunrise and photograph penguins with that lighting.  However, the day was overcast, so we didn’t really see a sunrise, but as the sky grew lighter we realized that the entire waterline, to about  25 feet or more deep on the black sand beach, was filled with elephant seals and fur seals of all sizes and ages. The male elephant seals were aggressively challenging or defending the existing territory borders, which made for some quick scrambles by us on occasion to stay out of their way.  Behind the seals (further from the water) were gentoo and king penguins, including a sizable king penguin colony.  Many of the penguins were trying to figure out safe paths to the water through the elephant seals, not an easy task with irritable enormous mammals in the way! 

We stayed on the beach for about 2 hours, watching the clashes between elephant seals, sometimes seeing little pups get caught between to rival males.  We also enjoyed watching the penguins.  We then returned to the ship for breakfast. At mid-morning, we disembarked again to go hiking.  We climbed up to the ridge (about 500 ft in elevation) overlooking the bay.  The views were wonderful and we got to see how massive the penguin colony was as well as the expanse of seals.  The only tricky part was finding a way down less steep than the one we had used coming up. In the end the most practical solution was to ride down a snow field in our parkas and waterproof pants... a good time sledding was had by all!  Some folks (Kevin included) climbed back up to slide down again.

After lunch the ship moved to the southern coast of South Georgia, facing Antarctica.  We passed through a field of icebergs resting on a shallow ridge outside the channel (whew!), and entered the Drygalski Fiord. The icebergs have traveled up from Antarctica. It was quite windy and a bit rough so we pulled into Larsen’s Harbor; within the harbor we were able to go back out in zodiacs to see Weddell Seals.  Weddell seals are mostly found in Antarctica, but may migrate to South Georgia to deliver their pups.  Our many days of phenomenal weather came to an end; today was gloomy and windy, and then started raining just as we headed out — a nasty wind-driven rain.  Shorty after we got back to the ship, it started to snow — a wind-driven snow!  This was our welcome to a more traditional South Georgia day.

Photos: Gentoo penguin at 5:00am and an iceberg.

South Georgia day two

November 1st: day two in South Georgia

Overnight we moved south down the eastern coast of South Georgia to Godthul (God’s cove) a beautiful inlet surrounded by steep mountains. We opted to sleep in this morning instead of doing our usual 6:00am wildlife watching trip to the bridge.  After breakfast, we took zodiacs to the beach, skirting the fur and elephant seals sunbathing. Yes, it was another calm and sunny day; so sunny that sunscreen was definitely needed.  We hiked up to a plateau to see a gentoo penguin colony. Compared to the massive colony of king penguins we saw yesterday, this one was quite small, just a few hundred.  After we returned to the ship, we were able to go kayaking around the inlet, looking at small icebergs, and peering into the depths of the kelp forest near the shore.  The kayaks are an inflatable type, which means they are very susceptible to wind and current.  The fact that we were able to go out in them was a testament to how calm the water and winds were.  Being able to kayak on one of these trips is a rare event.

During lunch the ship moved to Grytviken, a former sealing and whaling community and the place that Ernest Shackleton visited on his ill-fated Antarctica expedition in 1914-16.  It is almost unbelievable that a place of such beauty could have been used for such a grisly purpose... and now despite the rusting ships and factory ruins, the area is returning to beauty and native animals and plants. There were seals on the beaches, birds in the air and 2 humpbacks in the bay itself. We visited the museum, which had an amazing amount of information in a small space. It is run by a non-profit that has, among other things, successfully eradicated rats from the entire island, which in turn has enabled the birds to recover.  Two of the endemic species, the South Georgia pipit and the yellow-billed pintail duck, have made an incredible comeback.  

We are really enjoying the staff on the ship, particularly two naturalists from Argentina. One of them introduced tonight’s dinner, a traditional Argentine Asado with lots of different grilled meats. He was so funny when introducing tonight meal, which was a buffet instead of the usual served dinner, saying that you should not waste plate or stomach space on vegetables, save all the space for these traditional meats.  The food, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and desserts, on the trip has been marvelous.  It has been a challenge to match our intake with our exercise level — currently food is up three games to one.