Category: 2018 S. America and Antarctica trip winter

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February 5, 2018

We had another early morning. During the night we moved to Prion Island to see nests of the wandering albatross, the flying bird with the widest wing span in the world. It takes 14 months for these birds to fledge so they only mate once every two years. They mate for life and return every other year, to the same place they were born, to mate. They repeat their mating dance to renew their relationship. They lay just one egg and incubate it for 78 days. After the baby leaves the nest, it takes 5 years to mature and during that time it is at sea and it does not come to land.

We left the ship at 5:30 and started with shoreline cruise with Sophie, one of our kayak guides. The sun was rising and it was beautiful.

We saw lots and lots of fur seals. The fur seal population has exploded because they eat the same thing as the whales. The whale population is still recovering from being over hunted so there is lots of food in the sea. This has allowed the seals to be very successful. The babies are so curious and cute with their big eyes. We also saw birds including blue eye shags, shown here.

After about an hour we were dropped off on land and walked along a boardwalk up to nest viewing sites. Four seal babies walked in front of us for most of the way. They clearly wanted to be with us because they could have exited the boardwalk at any time. We got to the top of the hill and we saw 3 nests with the albatross incubating the egg. The male incubates first to give the female a chance to feed since she just layer the egg.  It was quite foggy but here is a picture

We came back to the ship and had breakfast. While we ate, the ship moved to Salisbury plain. This is the second largest king penguin rookery, with about 100,000 breeding pairs. The king penguins do not have a mating season so they can mate at any point. As a result there are penguins at all stages of the mating process.

It is very difficult to tell the male penguins from the female penguins.Here’s an interesting fact, in the bird world if the males and female look alike they are both involved in raising the chicks, if they don’t look alike the female does most of the work raising the chicks.  Here are pictures from Salisbury plain.

When we left the ship it was too windy to kayak but our kayaking guides were hopeful that the wind would die down some and we would be able to kayak. So we went ashore with our kayaking garb on. After about an hour on shore, we were informed that the kayaking was on. We were picked up by a zodiac and taken out to another zodiac which was towing the kayaks. We transferred into the kayaks and off we went. It was fun to be kayaking with the seals playing in the water and the penguin floating around like ducks. There was a spot where, according to our guide, Ewan, a fresh water stream emptied into the ocean and it was roiling with seals. Here are pictures of the seals and of penguins swimming by.

After about 45 minutes of kayaking we returned to the ship.

While we were kayaking many people saw a skua, a large predatory bird, get a penguin chick. Then the skuas fought over the chick. We heard that it was pretty gruesome.

I went up to the top deck to try to see them drag the kayaks up but they weren’t bring them up yet. They have a big crane on deck 7 that they use to raise and lower them. On the first one down and the last one up a member of the expeditionary crew rides with the zodiac and transfer into or out of the dinghy on deck 4. It’s quite a lot of work getting them up and down but they can get all 10 down in about 20 minutes.

Actually I haven’t mentioned how we load into the zodiacs yet. First of all we have to have our waterproof pants and boots on because most of the landings are wet landings and because you often get wet in the dinghies from the spray. We wear self inflating life jackets. We have to get scanned off and onto the ship. They always know exactly who is on shore and who’s on the ship. Then we have to dip our boots in biocide. Usually there are three or four people helping us get into the dinghy. Two in the dinghy and one or two on the ship. One person on the ship grabs the back of our life jacket and the optional second person takes our arm. We step onto a rubber step on the edge of the ship. Then we take an arm of the two people in the dinghy and step on to the edge of the dinghy, then to a step stool and finally onto the floor of the dinghy. One person hangs onto us until we a sitting on the edge of the dinghy. There are ropes along the edge of the dinghy to hold onto when the dinghy is moving. Then we get to shore they spin the zodiac so that the backend in against the shoreline. We slide to the back and flip our legs out, stand in the surf and walk up the beach where we take off our life jackets and stow them in bags. The life jackets are one way they make sure everyone is back on the ship. When we get back on the ship we step into a container with a rough bottom and scrub brushes on the sides to wash off our boots and then into the biocide again. They usually greet us with hot chocolate. All very efficient.

Once we were back on the ship we had lunch and after lunch we pulled anchor and headed for Antarctica.

That evening we had a auction to raise money for the S. Georgia rat eradication program. We bought a Shackleton photo printed on fabric. Overall the auction raised close to $7,000 which wasn’t even close to the record of $50,000. It was a lot of fun. Here’s a picture of a map that one of the expeditionary team member used as a canvas.

Here is a map of our stops on S. Georgia and our journey so far

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February 4, 2018

During the night we moved to Gold Harbour on the south east end of S. Georgia. They are trying to make up for the two days we lost when we were stuck in the Falklands due to the storm. Therefore we were up at 4:45 and they started loading zodiacs at 5:30.

They have us divided into four groups, albatross, gentoo, king (we are kings). and petrol, for loading into the zodiacs. They can take 8 to 10 people in a zodiac, depending on the sea conditions and landing conditions, and there are about 30 people per group.  Most of the time they spin the zodiacs and we get out into the surf along the back of the dinghy. They have provided us with muck boats which do a great job keeping our feet dry.

This was our first chance to really see elephant seals. It is past mating season but during mating season there are bull seals fighting for their beach real estate. We saw some juvenile males fighting, more for practice than for beach real estate. They are big animals and we stayed clear of them. Here are some pictures of elephant seals.

There is also a colony of gentoo penguins as well as a colony of king penguins. Here are pictures of gentoo with a few kings mixed in.

After walking the beach we came back to the ship for breakfast. During breakfast they moved the ship further south to Cooper Bay. This was the only stop where we would see macaroni penguins. We had the option to kayak but this would mean we would miss climbing the hill to see the macaroni. We opted not to kayak because we wanted to see the macaroni up close. Half of the passengers started by trekking up the hill to see the penguins and the other half started with a zodiac cruise. We were in the cruise group. We were lucky because our zodiac driver was Hannah, the marine mammal naturalist. We saw lots of birds as well as a female leopard seal. Hannah could tell it was a female because the females are larger than the males.  The leopard seals was huge and quite curious. So curious that she bit and punctured three of the zodiacs, but not our zodiac.  The zodiacs have eight air compartments so it wasn’t a big deal but interesting nonetheless. We also saw lots of macaroni penguins getting into and out of the water.  Here are pictures of the macaroni penguins and the leopard seal (it was hard to get a good picture of the leopard seal because we didn’t know where she would surface.)

It was started raining while we were out. Rick didn’t want to take out his camera and my gloves were wet through. The walk up the hill was supposed to be tough in the best of conditions. After our zodiac cruise we decided not to go up the hill because we thought it would be quite slippery and muddy. A couple of people fell and one lady really hurt her knee so it was just as well we didn’t go up the hill. In the end we were disappointed that we didn’t go kayaking because everyone said it was fantastic and we didn’t end up going up the hill anyway but as my grandfather use to say that the way the peanut butter bounces.

We came back the the ship for lunch and in the afternoon we cruised down the Drygalski fjord. It was beautiful with lots of glaciers and birds, specifically prions and storm petrols. There were many water falls from the melting glaciers, some of which evaporated before hitting the ocean. At the end of the fjord there was a glacier and thousands of birds flying around at the base. Adam, our birding naturalist, said that fresh water from the melting glacier was forcing cril up to the surface of the water which was a feast for the birds. The wind in the fjord was FIERCE. It would accelerate down the side of the fjord and it was almost impossible to stand. Here are pictures from the fjord. Notice the color of the water as a result of the melting glacier.

It was interesting to watch the boat to turn in a fjord not much wider than the boat itself. The captain used the bow thrusters to pivot around and we headed towards the mouth of the fjord.

That night we headed north back to the top of the island.

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February 3, 2018

Today we arrived at S. Georgia. It was very cloudy and overcast as we approached the island. We met with the kayaking team and they were hoping to kayak at each stop. But unfortunately it was too windy. On the way into the bay we passed Fortuna glacier. Here are a couple of pictures.

Our first stop was Fortuna Bay. Here are a couple of pictures of them lowering the zodiacs into the water.

It was incredibly wind, so windy at times I had trouble standing still. The animals at Fortuna Bay were amazing. We saw thousands of fur seal, many of them babies waiting for their mothers to come back from the ocean and feed them. Some of the juvenile males got a little aggressive. They would show their teeth and walk towards us but if you stood your ground they would just back off. The babies were so cute. I just wanted to pick them up and snuggle them.

We walked further to Whistle Cove, the site of a king penguin rookery, home to 15,000 pairs of king penguins. There were teenage chicks which still had the downy feathers, as well as parents incubating their eggs and chicks. It was spectacular, like something out of a National Geographic video.

Here are pictures from Fortuna Bay and Whistle Cove

I wish I had taken a video of the fur seals because they were so cute.  Here’s a video from YouTube, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BJVgx_Yslzk

During lunch the boat moved to Grytviken which had been a whaling station from early turn of the century until the 60’s. Here’s a picture of Grytviken from the ship.

This is where we immigrated into S. Georgia so we had to go through some formal procedures. While that was going on a resident from Grytiviken gave us a short presentation on their rat annihilation program. Rats had inadvertently been introduced by the whaling ships. The rats were very bad for the local animals, particularly the S. Georgia pipit, an endemic bird. There had been a huge, very successful effort to get rid of the rats, primarily using rat poison. Interestingly the effort was helped significantly by the local glaciers which the rats could not cross so the populations were self contained and could be targeted locally. They believe the island is now rat fee and are focused on prevention of reintroducing rats. Our speaker was looking for contributions to their effort.

Then we went to shore. There was an inspector on the ship checking our boots for seeds because they don’t want to introduce another problem species to the island. I had some seeds so a crew member used a knife to dig them out of my boot treads.

Shackleton is buried in Grytiviken. He was trying to organize another expedition when he had a fatal heart attack. Once we got ashore we gathered around his grave and Seb, a member of the expeditionary team, gave a toast to Shackleton, aka, the boss. Here’s a picture of his grave

There were lots of seals around. Here is a picture of a blonde fur seal. About one in thousand seals are blonde.

After that I went on the whaling tour which described the whaling process and provided details about the island’s involvement. In total, there were 175,000 whales “processed” here. It was quite a large community at it peak with about 300 men in residence during the summer months. We went to the museum and gift shop. Here are pictures of Grytiviken.

We returned to the ship for a late dinner and during the night we moved south.

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February 2, 2018

We had to move our clocks forward an hour to be on S. Georgia time. It was another day at sea so it was relatively uneventful. We had two lectures in the morning, one on the geology of S. Georgia and the other on seals and seal lions. We had to skip out of the second lecture a little early because we had signed up for a tour of the bridge. We can go to the bridge pretty much at anytime. The first mate showed us all the instrumentation used to run the ship. Unfortunately we can’t see the galley or the engine.

In the afternoon we had a mandatory bio security meeting. There is a big effort not to introduce any new species on S. Georgia. The whalers brought rats to the island and they are still trying to get rid of them. The rats are very harmful to the penguins and birds because they steal their eggs. We had to have all of our outer gear checked for seeds and our footwear washed. You can image that took awhile for 114 passengers.

After that we had a lecture on whaling.

That evening just before dinner we passed shag rocks. It was foggy so the pictures not great. If the weather had been better we were supposed to see lots of birds around the rock.

That evening we watch the movie “In the Heart of the Sea”, very appropriate timing.

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February 1, 2018

We were at sea today.  We had two lectures in the morning, one on the birds of S. Georgia and the other on iPhone photography.

They showed the movie “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” in the afternoon. I watched it because it was a good opportunity to finish the vest I have been working on.

That afternoon, Rick was able to get pictures of birds that were drafting off the ship. One is a giant petrol and the other is a wandering albatross.

The ship participates in four citizen science projects.  These are data collection projects for scientific researchers.  The projects are:

  1. Bird surveys – we counted the numbers and types of birds at specific times and locations
  2. Happy whales – we uploaded picture of humpback whales flukes.  Happy whales then tracks the whales around the world.  We did the same thing for weaddle and leopard seals.
  3. Clouds – To help NASA, we observed and recorded cloud coverage at the same time as satellites were flying overhead.  This allowed the scientists to “look” down and up on the clouds.
  4. Measuring the convergence – We crossed the convergence of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern ocean.  The ocean temperature, salinity, etc changes at the convergence.  The convergence is not at a specific location, rather it moves.  So we measured the water conditions and provided this info to scientists.

We watched the third installment of Chasing Shackleton with Seb that evening.

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January 31, 2018

We had another day anchored in the harbor. It was quite windy last night. Winds peaked at approximately 90 miles per hour. The captain and his crew were up all night, keeping the boat pointed into the wind and preventing it from dragging the anchor.

We did not get off the ship today. In the morning we had a lecture on the whales and dolphins that we might see and a lecture on the geology of the region. Two interesting points from the geology lecture.
1. The peninsula and the land are connected but the connection is under water. The land is pushed down under the weight of the ice. If the ice melted the land would rise above the current sea level. Of course if the ice melts sea level will rise too.
2. There are liquid lakes and rivers under the ice.

In the afternoon we had a lecture on Shackleton. That evening we saw part 2 of Seb’s Shackleton recreation adventure.

We were supposed to leave after lunch but we did not. Another ship left the harbor and found the seas so rough that they turned back. Our captain overheard their radio communication and decided to stay put a little longer. We left around 7 pm and it was clearly rougher than when we were sitting still but it was not too bad. They did have barf bag hanging off the railings. I have a half a patch on and am feeling just fine.

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January 30, 2018

We were supposed to be at sea on our way to S. Georgia, however, we are staying in the Falklands’ protected harbor to wait until the storm passes. We were tied up at the dock but another ship is coming in and needs the dock so we need to move and anchor in the harbor.

The impromptu program for today is to go to Bertha’s Beach which lies on the east coast of East Falkland. We were on the bus before 8 as they need to move the ship by 8.  It took about an hour and a half to get to Bertha’s beach. Unfortunately our bus had an engine problem and we drove quite slowly. On the way, our guide told us about the islands. We passed the military base which houses about 2,500 military personnel.

Once at the beach it was very, very windy, probably 30-40 knot winds. I walked along the beach with Adam, our bird naturalist, and we saw some coastal birds. Rick found a king penguin and followed him around hoping the penguin would lead him to more penguins but unfortunately he only saw the one penguin. According to Adam, the penguin was about to start molting. They molt once a year and can not go in the water to feed during that time. The molting process takes 3-4 weeks so this penguin will probably get quite hungry. The orange feathers on the chest and head dull just before the molt.

Here are some pictures from the walk.

On our way back to the ship we saw some rock runs. These rock runs form in areas of permifrost. I believe that it is the result of freeze/thaw cycle. Over millions of years the frost melts and the water runs down the hill. Each time the water runs down the hill, it removes sediment and moves the rocks a little bit and eventually the rocks are moved to the water runoff path.  They look like rock pathways.  It’s hard to see but here’s a picture of the rock runs.

We had a lecture that afternoon.

Here are some pictures of Stanley, taken from the ship anchored in the harbor.

It got so windy that evening that we were not allowed on the deck.

Seb, the expedition staff specializing in history, was a member of the team that recreated Shackleton’s sailing trip from Elephant Island to S. Georgia and climb over S. Georgia. PBS made a three part documentary about the trip called Chasing Shackleton. They showed the first part that evening and then Seb answered questions.

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January 29, 2018

Durning the night the ship moved to Stanley, the main town in the Falklands, and was tied up on a dock. The town has about 2,500 inhabitants. They recently had a referendum and decided to maintain their status as a British Overseas Territory. There seems to be a lot of resentment of Argentina. One person we talked to spoke about East Chile rather than say Argentina.

The Falklands are self-sufficient and do not relieve on England for monetary support. England pays for the military base which houses about 3,000 people. The Falklands’ economy is primarily based on fishing licenses. They “own” a circle of 200 miles beyond the islands which is very rich for fishing. The second component of their economy is tourism. They receive about 50,000 tourists a year. They generate about 40% of the power from wind. There are no trees so most of he houses are build from kits shipped in from England. There are quite a few areas that still have land mines from the war Falklands war in 1982. They are slowly but surely being removed.

The island used to be quite important during the whaling days. Ships would round Cape Horn which has very rough seas and then pull into the Falklands for repairs. With less traffic rounding the cape most of that business has dried up. There are quite a few shipwrecks in the harbor. I guess the boat owners couldn’t afford to fix the ships so they just abandoned them.

After breakfast we walked 4 km along the shore towards Gypsy Cove, spotting birds along the way. There were Magellanic penguins on the beach but we couldn’t get close because of potential land mines on the beach. Here are pictures from our walk.

After our walk we took the bus, went to town and had lunch at a pub with Forrest and Anna. There was no menu but there were three choices, fish and chips, chicken and chips, and curry chicken and chips. We had a nice lunch and then Rick played darts with a guy from Ireland. Rick won.

After lunch we walked to a souvenir shop because I think I left my hat at the last hotel so I now have a Falkland Islands hat. We returned to ship once our shopping was done.

We were supposed to leave the dock at 4:00. We were out on deck to watch them cast off. We waited and we waited and no action. There was a bird outside the guard shack who was waiting for some bread. After the guard threw some bread to him he tried to fly away and ended up flying backwards because it was so windy. When he tried to walk he ended up walking sideways because it was so windy.

Finally Hayley, our expedition leader, announced a meeting. There was a bad storm with winds over 50 knots headed for the Falklands. Therefore we were going to spend the night at the dock. It wasn’t clear when we would leave the Falklands and the captain would watch the weather and decide when it was safe to leave.

That night we had a speaker from the Falklands give a lecture about the Falklands and her research in the area. They have discovered oil within the territorial sea boundaries of Falklands. Her research is to establish a wildlife baseline and forecast the oil rig impact on wildlife.

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January 28, 2018

This morning I removed my scopolamine patch and started to feel better quite quickly.

We arrived at West Point on West Falkland in the morning. Only seven people live on this island and they are primarily sheep herders. Most of our ship mates went onto the island to see the nesting albatrosses and rockhopper penguins as well as to have tea and cakes at a local house. Us kayakers had our first session. Rick and I were in a double and we kayaked for about 45 minutes leaving from the beach. We kayaked along the shore looking at the wildlife. Here are a couple of pictures of the kayakers.

We saw birds and water fowl but I couldn’t tell you their names. We also saw a couple of elephant seals. Here are pictures of some of the wildlife we saw.

After about 45 minutes of kayaking they took us back to the ship where we changed out of our kayaking dry suits and then we went ashore. This is a picture of the buildings along the shore line.

Here are some pictures of the landscape. It was desolate, clearly a harsh environment.

After a 5 minute jeep ride we came to a nesting area for black-brow albatrosses and rockhopper penguins. The babies were relatively mature but most still had their down. They have down to keep them warm when they are babies but must grow feather in order to swim or fly. The albatross babies sit on a pedestal nest. There was a lot of squawking for food. Here are pictures.

We didn’t have time to go to the local house for tea and cakes but here’s a picture of it.

We headed back to the ship in the zodiacs for lunch.

During lunch the ship moved to Saunders Island where there was quite a large penguin colony as well as sheep grazing. Here we saw rockhopper, gentoo, megellanic, and king penguins.

We returned to the ship where we had our daily debriefing and dinner.

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January 27, 2018

I didn’t sleep very well last night. When I went to bed the ocean was very calm but I woke up at 2:00am and could feel the waves and could hear the boat slapping the water. When we go on our sailing adventures I usually feel seasick on the first day and then I become accustom to the motion. So I decided it was time for a scopolamine patch.

We were on the boat all day. Here are some pictures of our room and the ship.

It’s about 340 nautical miles from Ushuaia to the Falkland Islands and the trip took about 36 hours. The Falkland archipelago lies 280 miles east of the South American continent. It consists of two large islands, East and West Falkland, and more than 750 small islands and islets.

To entertain us they had two lectures before lunch. One on the history of the Falklands with an emphasis on the 74 day war between Argentina and GB. The other lecture was on the birds and marine mammals of the Falklands. Both were very informative.

After lunch we met with the kayaking guides. They can accommodate 16 kayakers. It seemed that a lot more people would have liked to kayak but didn’t sign up early enough. At the meeting they told us what to expect and then gave us our kayaking gear, including a dry suit, booties, dry bag, gloves, and a life jacket. Here’s a picture of us in our kayak costume.

That evening we had a Captain’s reception and a wonderful dinner. They do not assign you to a table. So it’s a great opportunity to meet people. We sat with a couple from Missouri, Anna and Forest. They are a lot of fun and we laughed throughout the dinner.

All day I was really tired and I thought it was because I had trouble getting back to sleep after I woke up at 2:00am. Also I was really, really thirsty. The ship staff told us to stay well hydrated because the air is very dry. Eventually I figured out that these are both side effects of the scopolamine.