Tuesday, December 22, 2009
We continued to luck out with moderate seas. Only one night of fairly serious rollers. New scopalamine patches appear behind ears, to ward off the evil spirits of seasickness.
Peter Hillary gave a great talk about his ascent of Mt. Vinson on the Antarctic mainland.
Trevor, our indomitable Scottish expedition guide, gave a jaw-dropping account and slide show of his retracement of Shackleton’s 800-mile lifeboat voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia. He had an exact replica of the James Caird built in Scotland and then brought to Elephant Island on the Kapitan Klebnikov. From there, he and three others sailed to South Georgia in the tiny wooden craft, enduring two gales and freezing temperatures.
On the afternoon of the 22nd of December, we gained sight of Coronation Island, one of the islands in the South Orkney group. Sculpted icebergs dotted the waters around the snow-capped island.
As we approached a chinstrap penguin colony, we began to see leopard seals cruising just off shore. These large seals are an efficient predator of penguins, with their huge jaws giving them a snake-like appearance. We were only about 50 yards from shore when the water exploded near us – a leopard seal had caught a chinstrap and was flinging it back and forth, trying to tear its skin off. Seabirds like petrels and shearwaters flocked past, dipping into the water and sharing bits of the feast. Grim, but leopard seals have to eat too.
We landed on the pebbled beach amid large chunks of ice that had broken off a nearby glacier and floated to shore. Chinstraps on their nests were everywhere and the shore was a penguin highway. A leopard seal slid stealthily among the ice blocks a couple of yards from shore and just a few yards from us, probably hoping to catch penguins as they swam back to their nests.
Small groups of penguins would suddenly burst out of the water, skitter over the ice blocks and race up on the shore, doing their best to avoid the seal. It was poignant to see their panicked frenzy gradually calm down as they realized they had made it safely to shore.
Next: A pilgrimage to Elephant Island