Monday, January 22
It was foggy again the next morning. A light snow was falling. The snow melted as soon as it hit the deck of the ship.
Soon after sunrise, Howard Rosenbaum of the American Museum of Natural History got on the intercom to announce that a Southern Right Whale had been sighted to the port of the ship. Our stateroom faced out the port side and I could see the whale blow and surface in the distance. At one point it raised a large pectoral fin out of the water. Very quickly, the ship left it behind.
Through the fog we spotted the first iceberg of the trip. It was a large tabular iceberg. The old, glacial ice was deep blue. The iceberg was grounded, resting on the sea floor as it slowly melted. Soon we could see many other blue icebergs of all shapes and sizes.
Beyond the icebergs we glimpsed our first view of land in the Antarctic. The desolate shore of Elephant Island loomed under the overcast. A glacier reached down to the water in an ice filled bay. The water of the bay could be seen to be much greener and lighter in color than the ocean water.
We had made such good time crossing the Drake Passage, that Captain Notke had suggested that we could stop at Cape Wild to see where Shackelton had left his men 85 years ago. An extra Zodiac cruise was added to the agenda. We were taken into the icy harbor, right into the slush ice.
Cape Wild is a Chinstrap Penguin rookery. The rocks along the shore held a large population of the black and white "feathered fish". After a little observation it was easy to see where the penguins were located. The rocks were stained by a thick coating of pink penguin guano. Large flocks of Chinstrap Penguins were swimming in the water around the ship. They leaped out of the water like dolphins as they swam.
Snowy Petrels and white Sheathbills wandered among the penguins on the rocks, snacking on the fresh guano and chick carcasses. Flocks of black and white Cape Petrels were resting on the water around the harbor, and Giant Southern Petrels circled overhead.
Weddell Seals were resting on the rocks near the water. Antarctic Fur Seals had climbed farther up above the surf to stretch out on the rocks. They are more closely related to California Sea Lions than to the "true seals". They have external ear flaps and functional hind limbs, which can propel them across the ground very quickly. Leopard Seals investigated some of the Zodiacs closely as they cruised through the ice of the bay.
The pilot of our Zodiac was named Heinrich. Two years ago, Heinrich had participated in a recreation of Shackelton's voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island in a replica of the small open boat that Shackelton had used.
We could see a statue mounted on a pedestal on the rocks. It was a bust of the captain of the Chilean vessel that had succeeded in rescuing Shackelton's men in 1916. Pity the poor artist who sculpted the bust, only to have it placed in a location where almost nobody would ever see it. Our Zodiac cruise of the cape was a very unusual event and nobody in our group landed there to get a closer look at the statue.
Heinrich steered us through a maze of blue icebergs. Most of them had penguins standing on them. They were resting on the bottom of the harbor. Each was eroded for several feet above and below the waterline. Some had developed wide overhangs. Fresh fracture faces marked icebergs which had recently split apart. Older bergs had been melted into smooth, rounded forms.
We were taken around the craggy point, past the surging inlets. Penguins were inching their way down to the water. They watched as the water rose and fell several feet with each wave. When a particularly large wave lifted the water nearly to the height of the penguins, several of them took the opportunity to jump in. Simultaneously, three penguins rocketed up out of the water and landed on the rocks a few feet above the water.
It was snowing big fluffy flakes by the time that we cruised back to the ship. Each Zodiac took on a new load of passengers as the first load returned to the ship. The water was much rougher than it had been for the Zodiac landings in the Falklands. Each passenger had to carefully time his or her departure from the Zodiac to coincide with the moment that the boat came level with the gangway. Two crewmen grabbed the arms of the passengers to facilitate their exit from the Zodiac.
By the time the last Zodiacs had returned from the cruise it was snowing heavily. The snow was sticking, lasting long enough to accumulate on the deck.
The ship hauled up its anchor and set sail for Cape Lookout on the other side of Elephant Island, where we would make our first actual landing in the Antarctic. I could see bergie bits floating on the water outside my stateroom window as we cruised around the island.
A Humpback Whale was spotted in the water near the ship. Captain Notke steered the ship in a circle to give the passengers a good chance to see the whale. It blew and surfaced repeatedly for several minutes. As we watched for the whale from the stern of the ship we heard the crowd at the bow give a shout in unison. Geoff Green announced over the loudspeakers that the whale had just breached directly in front of the ship.
We passed a huge glacier as we neared Cape Lookout. The front of the glacier was miles across and it extended well out into the harbor. The old ice at the base of the glacier was deep blue in color. The blue ice was overlain by an accumulation of white snow and young ice. The top of the glacier was a maze of crevasses.
There was a glacier in every valley on the island. The valleys were so steep that the glaciers were broken into jumbled icefalls, slowly tumbling their way down to sea level. Glaciers were perched on the tops of the mountains, with their broken faces suspended over a few thousand feet of steep, rocky cliffs. Any ice that broke away from those glaciers had a long drop ahead of it.
Cape Lookout has a craggy, pyramid-shaped islet separated from the shore by a narrow strait. The cape is the site of another large Chinstrap Penguin rookery. The Zodiac brought us to shore on a narrow, cobblestone spit connecting a rock outcrop to the main island. Chinstrap Penguins were constantly waddling into the water or hauling themselves onto land along the spit.
There were two female Southern Elephant Seals stretched out, seemingly asleep, on the cobbles. They were less concerned by the uneven, rocky surface on which they rested than I would have been in similar circumstances. One of them occasionally lifted her head and looked around at the troop of photographers and videotape shooters. There had been several other Elephant Seals when the first group had arrived, but most of them had wallowed into the water before our group got there.
The area surrounding the landing site was thickly coated in pink penguin guano. The constant dampness supported a thick, old fish market kind of odor. The air was also filled with the constant display cries of male penguins looking for mates.
Sheathbills wandered among the penguins, feeding on the rich supply of guano and other organic material. Cape Petrels and Stormy Petrels had built nests in the stones high above on the rock outcrop. Some of the black and white petrels could be seen to be sitting on chicks. One of the petrels lifted its body and we could see the heads of a pair of little, charcoal-gray chicks under its breast.
The rookery contained many downy penguin chicks, standing about on the guano-covered rocks. Sleepy chicks rested their heads behind one of their wings to take naps. Some of them were napping on their bellies with no concern for the pink shit that accumulated on their feathers.
Chick feeding was a constant operation. The gray chicks tickled the beaks of the adults to trigger a regurgitation of the krill stored in their crops. It was possible to see the pink, shrimp-like crustaceans come up into the mouths of the adults before the chicks reached in to grab them. Krill grow to be nearly two inches long, and wouldn't look out of place on a cocktail shrimp platter.
The flat areas near the rocky outcrop were covered in penguins. Other penguins had to climb to higher ground to find a place to raise their chicks. Some of them climbed several hundred feet up the slope to find their chicks. It must take hours for some of them to climb up to their chicks on the mountainside above the cape.
Among the Chinstrap Penguins there were a few Gentoo Penguins, easily distinguished by their orange feet and white head spots. A pair of Macaroni Penguins had taken up a position near the strait between the spit and the pyramid-shaped island. Macaroni Penguins look a bit like Rockhopper Penguins. Each one has a crest of yellow feathers on each side of its head. The members of each species of penguins paid very little attention to the members of the other species.
Antarctic Fur Seals had staked out many locations in the rookery. Most of the time they rested quietly. Every so often they lifted a flipper or tail fin to scratch an itch. More fur seals were swimming offshore. Several young seal pups slept near one group of adult female fur seals.
After spending a suitable period of time on the cape, we were treated to a Zodiac cruise around the craggy island across the strait from the cape. The Zodiac driver steered us around the island, just outside the surf zone, to see where the Macaroni Penguins were more prevalent. He nosed the Zodiac toward the shore to allow us to stand in the center of the boat, one at a time, and shoot pictures of the penguins. He carefully negotiated the way between the surging water of the inlets and rocky crags jutting out of the water farther offshore. The water in the inlets rose and fell over a dozen feet with each wave. The narrow passage that we rode through was choppy and rough.
Once all the passengers had returned to the ship, it turned south and headed for the Antarctic Peninsula. Captain Notke took the time to cruise along the north coast of the Gibbs Islands, and then turned around the western end of the islands to cruise along the south coast. The islands form a little archipelago that is capped with great quantities of snow and ice. A massive cornice of snow was suspended at the top of a dark gray, jagged cliff, high above the sea. A ski jumper could have caught some major air off that cornice.