Hi Everyone,
Happy New Year! I made a bit of a late start to the day today (as did many of us) after the new year celebrations/late night fishing last night. Thankfully, I made it up on to the deck before we reached the southern end of our transect. The view was stunning! We ended up much closer to South Georgia overnight and the fog had lifted so there was an amazing view of the northwest islands and the main island. We could see rock formations, glaciers, snow and mountains. It was a breathtaking view that occupied our cameras for a long time.
Also, as we were now closer to the island, we began to see even more wildlife and we spent the morning on the deck absolutely bombarded by everything South Georgia had to offer. No sooner had someone spotted something (like a group of seals diving and swimming around), another would have seen a raft of penguins or some stunning seabirds. We had to be very choosy about which things to take photos of and where to look, truly incredibly spoilt for choice. The highlights for me were the many gentoo and chinstrap penguins which came quite close to the ship so that we could get a good look (and even some photos). We also saw plenty of Antarctic fur seals and seabirds, with a personal highlight being what I think was an Antarctic cormorant, as I hadn’t seen one before.
The rest of the day passed relatively peacefully, with a CTD cast and some water sampling as well as a quick run up to the bridge to see a large group of humpback whales far off in the distance.
The final highlight of the day was getting to help with the RMT nets in the evening. These nets have been put in overnight for the past few days to try and catch krill (and other Antarctic organisms). They are done at night because that is when it is easier and more organisms are at the surface but unfortunately there had not been much success in the previous nights. Thankfully, tonight we got to see loads of krill caught, hundreds and thousands of them, as well as some other creatures like ice fish and sea angels (I think that is the correct name, a species of sea snail that looks very superficially like an underwater angel). We then got to sorting the krill out and dividing them between all the different experiments to estimate biomass, health and other features of the krill. It was so cool to actually see them in real life, fresh from the sea. You could even see a large green region in them where they had been eating algae.
Overall, a great day and a fantastic start to the new year!
01/01/23
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