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.
No comments:
Post a Comment