Hi Everyone,
I had a very light workload today and so I decided to take advantage of this by spending as much time on deck wildlife watching as possible, to maximise my chances of observing (and photographing) some of the amazing Antarctic wildlife. With this in mind I managed to spend a full 7 hours over the course of the day on the front deck of the ship watching the animals, chatting with the people on the bridge about what we could see, and taking hundreds of terrible photos (my photography skills need work).
There was a huge amount of wildlife to see, the highlights for me were a couple of rafts of gentoo penguins which I saw during the day. Only very fleetingly! But even these short moments were very exciting, with 5-10 penguins a reasonable distance from the ship, watching them “porpoise” around as they swam was very cool. Having primarily seen penguins on land in zoos before, they seem far more elegant and much more at home swimming and diving in their native waters. At one point we even saw some Sei Whales at a significant distance from the ship. We could only see their backs but the position of the dorsal fin a long way down the back gave them away.
For most of the day I was taking photos of the hundreds of seabirds surrounding the ship, usually only 10-20 at a time, but at some moments there could be upwards of 100 flying around the ship. These birds were of many varieties, the bulk of them were prions (small, light coloured birds similar to a tern) with some larger petrels and the huge albatross providing some size and weight to these flocks. The petrels do range from the huge seagull-sized giant petrels down to the Wilson’s storm petrel which is much smaller, around 30cm, and looks very unsuited for the huge waves and rough seas.
My favourite seabirds so far would have to be the sooty albatross though as they look very elegant with their delicate brown plumage (they also have a special place in my heart due to the huge amount of effort required to get even one good photo of them).
The end of my time on deck was rewarded with some first glimpses of South Georgia. We could just about make out Willis, Trinity and Bird islands through the fog. It was incredible to watch the land slowly rise up out of the sea, the first land we have seen for many days.
We have high hopes to see more of South Georgia over the next few days!
Today was also New Year’s Eve and despite some initial concerns that there would be no celebration due to some busy shifts, we did manage some festivities. A few of us were on shift around midnight taking water samples from the CTD array, but we mostly managed to sprint away for a couple of minutes, celebrate new year, and get back to finish the job.
The celebrations themselves consisted of some very palatable non-alcoholic champagne, and then the ringing of the ship’s bell by the youngest and oldest members of the ship, a long-standing tradition. I rounded off my four minutes of new year’s celebrations with some singing of auld lang syne on the deck of the ship.
Overall it was a very wholesome and enjoyable new year.
31/12/22
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