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.