Tag Archives: Scenery

The Scenic South Orkneys

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Friday 1 March 2024­ – In following Shackleton’s route, i.e. heading towards South Georgia, the benign conditions and lack of icebergs in the way had enabled the skipper to make sufficiently good progress that Pippa could plan an extra stop, rather than just blatting our way directly to South Georgia.  So we found ourselves at Shingle Cove, which is on Coronation Island, part of the South Orkneys.  In sunshine! And light winds!!

The sunshine made the scenery quite spectacular.

 

But equally, we could see that we were in Iceberg Alley, so once again the captain had done a good job of not bumping into anything.

This meant we could undertake a brief expedition from Hondius. The specifics of the timing meant a slightly unusual sequence of events – Blue Group went before lunch and Orange Group after – but it was nice to get off the ship in light winds and sunshine.

The landing area was, unsurprisingly, a shingle beach, or at least a beach with small stones on it rather than inconveniently large boulders. Right by where we climbed out of the Zodiacs were several elephant seals, one of which, although not a full-grown adult, was quite huge.

You can see that his size dwarfs the other seals on the same stretch of beach.  You could tell he wasn’t full grown because his nose hadn’t grown out into the elephantine proboscis that marks out adult elephant seals; but you can see it starting to develop.

Even if he wasn’t fully grown, he was nonetheless an impressive sight.

Eventually he got fed up with people staring at him and lumbered off to face away from us, looking like nothing so much as a grumpy Vogon.  Well, all Vogons are grumpy, so I suppose that’s a bit tautological.

The views from the island continued to be spectacular.

but there were other things to be seen apart from just the view. Turning one way led us to a glacier that was unusual in that it debouched on to land rather than the sea.

And heading the other way led to what was once a colony of penguins.  Since all the chicks had fledged, there were actually very few penguins left

and the main inhabitants of the island were seals, mainly elephant but with a leavening of fur seals.

There was somewhat gruesome evidence of the demise of many penguins

but we weren’t sure whether these had been predated or had just expired.  There were skuas around

and these are sufficiently nasty pieces of work that they might p-pick a p-penguin if they felt p-peckish.

The rocks that lay around on the walk were very colourful in places

and the paths that the landing party had marked out for us with red poles led past rocks decorated with moss and a striking orange lichen

that we were enjoined to be careful not to walk on, as it is fragile and takes centuries to grow.  And all the way along our walks there were more seals, all of whom were evidently conserving energy, since they moved not a muscle as we went by.

One of the main reasons for their lack of movement was that they are moulting.  Like penguins, these seals undergo what’s called a “catastrophic moult”.  Here’s a good example.

During the moult, they cannot go into the water to feed, so conserving energy is an important tactic.

Apart from the bit where I fell over, slightly damaging both my camera and my wife in the same moment of clumsiness*, the expedition was a delight, partly because of the scenery and partly because of the sunshine.  We headed back to Hondius, which eventually set off in the general direction of South Georgia, passing south of the South Orkneys and providing the passengers with views of blowing whales and some more wonderful scenery.

There were many vast icebergs, as big as apartment blocks.

 

There were also a handful of fishing vessels nearby

which we reckon were probably fishing for krill.  Whilst this is not illegal, there are supposed to be quotas for krill fishing; but there’s no policing mechanism, and there is a significant danger (and some evidence) of krill overfishing.  Although these small shrimp-like creatures are astonishingly plentiful, the human appetite for them for purposes that are unnecessary – omega-3 supplements, skin care products, dog food (!) and, most irritatingly of all, food that will turn farmed salmon a more marketable shade of pink – is not only endangering the food chain, since practically everything is utterly dependent upon krill, but also contributing to climate change, since Antarctic krill (if left to themselves) sequester more carbon from the atmosphere than the Amazon rain forests.  This is a sobering message, and one hopes that people will come to understand the seriousness of the situation and start changing purchasing decisions away from products which use krill or krill oil.

One can but hope that matters will improve.  Indeed, the way the Antarctic has been internationally recognised as an important part of the planet is evidenced by the international Antarctic treaty, originally signed up to by 12 member countries and now involving some 27, either as claiming some territorial rights or wishing to enter the area for research purposes.  The conditions of the treaty lay down strict rules about what may and may not be done in the region. It’s heartening to know that countries, even ones which traditionally compete such as USA and Russia, can work together for some kind of common good.  As we head for South Georgia, leave the Antarctic and cross the 60th parallel heading north, I feel better educated about the critical importance of this region, with even a glimmer of hope that the human race might not, for once, fuck something up.

 

 

* Not too seriously, thank goodness.  However, my wife will repair herself, but the camera, whilst still capable of taking pictures, is going to need a visit to a service centre.

Three Elephants in One Day

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Thursday 29 February 2024 – After a spell of weather sufficiently wild and woolly that one chap we know actually lost his glasses on the expedition that we decided not to participate in, and which has kept us all on board ever since, the day dawned bright and sunny, and there in front of us (well, actually to port, if you’re being picky) was the first of our three elephants.

Elephant Island is probably most famous as being the place from which Sir Ernest Shackleton launched his renowned and ultimately successful rescue attempt, by striking out in a 22-foot boat with two other men, aiming for South Georgia, where he knew there was a whaling station.  There, he hoped, the whalers would be able to help him stage a mission to rescue the 16 he’d left behind (see later).  He was ultimately successful and is therefore regarded as a hero*; and in his honour, today was being referred to on Hondius as “Shackleton Day”: an opportunity to review his exploits and then to follow in his tracks towards South Georgia.

Our captain took Hondius around Elephant Island to the north side, where we would be able to see Point Wild, the place where Shackleton’s men sheltered whilst he struck out heroically to rescue them.  From that side, the weather was less clement,

but merely overcast and breezy, a nice change from the horizontal rain of the previous days.

Whilst we’d been taking this circumnavigation, we had our second elephantine encounter, something which was actually quite magical, but very difficult to capture photographically; a huge pod of fin whales, feeding.  Fin whales are huge; second only to blue whales in size, and growing up to around 25 metres in length. There were, according to some estimates, as many as 40 of them, swimming around, blowing and feeding on the krill and fish that were disoriented by their antics.  As ever, I have some video, but the various stills Jane and I managed to get between us didn’t do justice to the sight, which was truly majestic.

If you look at the photo below, you can see that there are spouts right across the frame. It’s not a perfect image, but I hope it conveys the scope of what was going on.

Of course, all this disturbance in The (Oceanic) Force brought out all sorts of other creatures to feed on the fallout from the whales’ feeding.  There were porpoising penguins,

shags,

Black-browed albatrosses

and even a stormy petrel on a stick.

OK, it wasn’t on a stick. Or even a petrel.  We think it was actually a light-mantled sooty albatross. But I didn’t want to let the truth get in the way of a cheap laugh.

Eventually, we reached Point Wild, named, not because of any weather conditions, but after Frank Wild, one of Shackleton’s men, who had found it and deemed it a suitable place for the rest of the men to shelter whilst Shackleton was off doing his heroics. In the end they were there for 4 ½ months… It doesn’t look all that inviting, to be honest.

There’s an area between the large rock on the left and the smaller one in the centre which is a sort of cove.  The smaller rock was absolutely covered with penguins (the tiny flecks you can see below).

 

I should pay tribute to the navigation skills of the captain at this point, because, in order to give us passengers something extra to see, he gently let Hondius drift on the wind towards Point Wild, something that must take some nerve, as it’s probably expensive to get it wrong.  Anyway, that’s what he did, and we were able to get an eyeful of this special sight.

You have to look rather carefully to see it, but there it is;

a bust of Luis Pardo, who was the captain of a Chilean ship, Yelcho, which was the vessel which actually performed the rescue of the stranded men.

So, Kudos to the captain for his skill and daring, and it was out with the rum and hot chocolate as we passengers celebrated the memory of the kind of derring-do which marked out the heroic age of Antarctic exploration**.

Shortly after setting off again, we had our third and final elephantine encounter.

Can you see it in the photo above?  A thin grey line stretching from  horizon to horizon?

It’s an iceberg.

One, single, iceberg. A23a. The biggest iceberg currently extant.

It broke away from the ice shelf in 1986, was grounded and therefore stationary for some time, but is now floating freely at a speed of around 3 miles per day.

It’s unimaginably vast.  If you were to pick it up and pop it back down centred on Charing Cross (the middle of London as far as signposts are concerned), then I, for one, would be very cross, because it would crush my house. My house is in Surrey, 25 miles (40 km) to the south west.  So A23a is bigger than Greater London, covers a greater area than the M25.  Of course you can’t capture that in photos.  But here are a few, anyway.

It varies between 20 and 40 metres tall above the sea, which means that there’s some 300 metres of it below the water.

Mesmerising. Mind blowing. A privilege to see it.

What a day we’d had! Such sights and experiences!

There was some light relief available in the evening, as the staff staged a Film Night, with popcorn an’ everyfink.

The film was, of course, “Shackleton”, starring Kenneth Branagh, sporting a particularly heroic hairstyle.

And that was it for the day.  We’re headed along a similar track to Shackleton’s rescue mission, and so will eventually reach South Georgia. We have one stop en route where, conditions permitting, we’ll make landfall for the first time in a couple of days.  I’m hoping for benign weather conditions, and time, as ever, will tell…

 

 

* His rescue mission was, indeed, a heroic exploit and totally admirable.  Both Jane and I, however, regard the whole thing as an exemplar of How To Get On In Corporate Life: cock something up quite badly and then move mountains in a very obvious way to rescue the situation.  Management only remembers the heroics, not the cock-up.  Frankly, in our humble opinions, Shackelton should never have left South Georgia in the first place; the whalers there – and they knew this stuff – told him not to because of the dangers of particularly bad sea ice that year. He went ahead anyway, and that sea ice destroyed his ship, the less-than-ideally named Endurance.

** Less well-known was the other half of the Shackleton expedition.  Shackleton’s original objective was to cross the continent from one ocean to another (the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, actually).  He could take with him sufficient supplies to get him to the Pole, but needed further supplies for the other side of it.  To this end, a party of men set out from New Zealand to the Ross Sea end of Antarctica, to forge south towards the pole from there to drop supply depots for Shackleton’s second half.  This mission, although apparently successful in that it did drop three supply depots totalling a couple of tons of food, was a disaster – poorly-led, badly-planned and resulting in the deaths of three men. And, of course, ultimately pointless because Shackleton barely even got started before losing his ship. Such was the stuff of which men were made in those days.

Gen 2

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Tuesday 27 February 2024 – Our luck with the Antarctic weather looked to be running out as we peered at the morning’s prospects from the cabin.

There was a stiff breeze (about 10 knots, we were told) and it was raining. The only redeeming feature, and it was only a marginal redemption, was that the temperature was above freezing – about 2°C.

We were parked in Salpetriere Bay, known as the “Iceberg Graveyard”, because the vagaries of prevailing wind and currents tend to shepherd passing icebergs into the bay such that they can’t then float out again.  Thus it seemed that a Zodiac cruise around the bay should give us some great icescapes.

It did.

It also gave us a great wildlife experience, one which I hadn’t expected and, indeed, one which even the guides found remarkable.

But first the scenery.  It was spectacular.

This was my favourite among the many scenes we enjoyed on the morning expedition.

We had been told that there were colonies of gentoo penguins in the bay, and so there were.

The ones above look quite neat and tidy in their back-and-white dinner suit outfits.  The colony as a whole

not so much.  The pinky-brown stuff is penguin shit.  And there’s a lot of it. Really, a lot.

The individual penguins are very penguinish.

Many of them are chicks or adults which are moulting and hence couldn’t go into the water.

Also on the wildlife front, I tried to capture a few shots of the birdlife around.  There were some shags on the rocks and several kelp gulls.  This one is an adult.

And a juvenile or two were flying around.

We also saw an Antarctic tern. We weren’t anywhere near its nest, so it wasn’t in attack mode.

Some of the penguins were in the water and were skipping about madly.

This tactic, called “porpoising”, is how they move at their fastest, some 35kph.  And we managed to catch sight of the reason why.

A leopard seal, the only seal species in these parts which eats penguins.  This was the unexpected treat for both us passengers and the guides.  These seals are solitary and elusive and some of the guides had rarely seen them.  This one was very curious about us

and came and played around our Zodiac, and the other ones that were in the same area as we were.  The water was clear enough that we could see it actually swimming around and under the boat, so we had several minutes in its company.

Extraordinarily, it was not the only leopard seal in the bay.  We came across another, basking on an ice floe,

which gave us a chance to see its snake-like, evil and Voldemortish head.

Amazingly, there was yet another, also basking,

which, like the others, was the centre of considerable attention.

Leopard seals are probably the most voracious of the seals, in that they prey on a huge variety of other creatures, including baby seals of other species, as well as penguins, fish and the ubiquitous krill.  To deal efficiently with the latter, they have evolved teeth of a special shape which close together to form a filter; the seals can take a mouthful of water and krill, and expend the water through clenched teeth, leaving just the krill to eat.

Crabeater seals (whose pups are prey for the leopard seals) also have this tooth configuration, as almost their entire diet is krill.  Leopard seals, on the other hand, have also got fearsome canines and strong jaws which allow them to catch and bite their other prey.  We were told not to put a hand in the water, as a bite from a leopard seal could actually take it off.

That was our wildlife treat for the morning, alongside the spectacular icescapes of the iceberg graveyard.  The afternoon had the possibility of a landing at a nearby site, reached after a short move by Hondius to a place called Port Charcot. Calling it a port rather overstates its extent.

On the top left you can just make out a cairn, which is a not to Jean Charcot, who was a Frenchman who made two noted expeditions mapping the Antarctic Peninsula in the early 20th century. He was part of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration between 1901 and 1920, during which thousands of kilometres of the coastline were mapped; the era included the Shackleton debacle and the Scott-Amundsen competition.

Those who were interested could walk up to the cairn; there was also a reasonably substantial colony of gentoo penguins on the island.  It was really quite windy and there was also a fair bit of rain in the air, moving more horizontally than vertically. On that basis, the visit to the cairn held few attractions for Jane and me, and we contented ourselves with stumbling and sliding our way to the penguins

across snow and ice which was lavishly decorated by algae, turning it green, and penguin shit, turning it also brown.

As is the norm with penguins, they were behaving in agreeably penguinish ways; I have video but internet bandwidth constraints mean it’s not practical to share it, I’m afraid.  There were adults feeding chicks;

penguins eating snow as a source of “fresh” water*,

which must be quite a test for their digestive system, I’d have thought; and several penguin highways, routes from the colony to the sea etched out by thousands of laborious penguin journeys.

The colonies tend to be high up because gentoos need rocks upon which to build nests (normally by stealing stones from their neighbours’ construction efforts), and the tops of hills is often where the snow is first cleared by the wind; hence the need for the journey from sea to colony.

The net effect is that the whole area is covered in penguin poo,

so being careful with one’s footing is very desirable.  You can’t avoid stepping in it, but you can at least try not to fall over in it, something that a couple of our landing party failed to do.

After a while of watching the penguins, we decided to head back down and go back to the boat.  The landing area was near one of the spots where the penguins entered the water

and we could see them porpoising around in the water close to the shore as they sought food (again, I have video, but blah blah).

It is impossible to walk there without getting one’s boots covered in penguin excrement, which is not something to be transported back to the boat: partly because that would possibly spread unwelcome biological material to where it shouldn’t be; and also because it stinks.  So the team take care to ensure that boots are well cleaned before you are allowed back on to a Zodiac.

Even so, clean as we were were on arrival to Hondius, there seemed to be a pervasive pong of penguin poo hanging around for a while afterwards.

That was it for the day’s excursions, but there was still some visual entertainment to come as Hondius was carefully steered up the narrow Lemaire Channel,

which, we were told, is one of the most dramatic and most-photographed pieces of coastline.  Obviously the best place to see the scenery from would be the bow of the ship.  But it was bloody freezing, raining and blowing a gale, so I, like other sensible souls, retired to the bridge to watch the scenery go by through windows which were obligingly cleaned by the large windscreen wipers there.

There were a few idiots hardy souls who braved the bow.  There always are.

The hour or so spent gingerly creeping along the channel was a perfect exemplar of the standard Walker holiday mantra: “it would have been better if it were clearer”.

It was obvious that the scenery was dramatic; I just wish we could have seen more of it.

It’s a very narrow channel, littered with ice

as you can see from the radar plot.

After a while the fog really came down and so I retired to the bar for a G&T and waited for the briefing for the morrow.  The destination, which is a fair bit north, is Mikkelsen Harbour at D’Hainaut Island, where can be found the remains of a whaling station and more gentoo penguins.  The weather prospects are less than stellar so it may well be that we will spurn the opportunity to get cold, wet and caked in penguin poo in favour of a calm and orderly morning. Time will tell.

 

* Gentoo penguins can drink salt water (just as well, really) and they have a special gland on their forehead through which they can excrete the salt. A tricky choice, I’d have said – which tastes better, ocean water or shitty snow?