It was a stunning morning on the water as we cruised in Zodiacs around Cooper Bay. We were delighted to see huge icebergs looming in the distance and sunny blue skies. Our Zodiac cruise brought us to a macaroni and chinstrap penguin colony, while some were also lucky enough to have an encounter with a large female leopard seal, who swam curiously around the boats. In the afternoon, we came upon the largest king penguin colony on South Georgia at St. Andrews Bay, a colony first described in 1883 during the German International Polar Year Expedition.
- Daily Expedition Reports
- 03 Nov 2019
Cooper & St. Andrews Bay, South Georgia, 11/3/2019, National Geographic Explorer
- Aboard the National Geographic Explorer
- Antarctica
Amy Malkoski, Undersea Specialist
Amy was raised near Cape Cod in coastal Marion, Massachusetts, and her relationship with the ocean and nature has always been an active one. Her parents, avid divers and marine biologists, introduced her to the underwater world when she was very youn...
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South Georgia and the Falklands
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West Point Island
Our destination this afternoon remains my very favorite place in the Falklands. A warm welcome is always given by the caretakers of this lovely place, Theis and Kiki – Swedish and German respectively. They were at the end of their nine years here and we were among the last ships to visit this season. Of course, we visit the island because of the wildlife, and, after a nice forty-minute walk, we arrived at the Devil’s Nose albatross colony. Here, we found thousands of black-browed albatrosses living cheek by jowl with hundreds, if not thousands of rockhopper penguins. It is not always a happy marriage, but generally they get on, the albatross helping protect the penguin eggs and chicks from predation by the local Johnny rooks aka striated caracaras. A good walk deserves a fine afternoon tea, and we were treated to just that back at the farmhouse. In the garden, a yellow rose flowered beautifully overlooking the place where Lars Eric Lindblad’s ashes were scattered.