Antarctic Sound, Paulet Island, Fridtjof Sound
Today was vast, overwhelming and where words can’t begin to express all that was experienced deep within our beings.
For those who were out on deck early, the greeting from deck was but a glimpse of what was to come; huge rafts, made up of thousands of Adelie penguins, noisily squawking and swimming in the quiet waters. The icescape was vast—tabular bergs, glacier bergs, bergy bits, growlers, brash ice, white ice, blue ice, green ice, dirty ice, ice floes—but maybe Frank Worsley, Shackleton’s redoubtable captain, best describes the fantastic scene: “Swans of weird shape pecked at our planks, a gondola steered by a giraffe ran foul of us, which amused a duck sitting on a crocodile’s head. Just then a bear, leaning over the top of a mosque, nearly clawed our sail … All the strange, fantastic shapes rose and fell in stately cadence with a rustling, whispering sound and hollow echoes to the thudding seas …”
Then we were blown over by the thousands upon thousands of Adelie Penguins on Paulet Island, the adults busily moving to and fro with purpose as they set about the business of feeding their chicks, the chicks with their juvenile plumage popping through their down covering and all about the cacophony. As we look up the volcanic slopes we can’t fully grasp the enormity of this colony, maybe as much as 100,000 pairs! The Adelie’s have had a very good season, which is welcome news, the chicks look on course to be ready to head off for the sea within the next 14 days and the parents can then fatten up in preparation for their catastrophic molt. The breeding season will then be largely over.
But there is so much more: Antarctic shags nest off on one sector, kelp gulls caw, dark skuas constantly patrol the colony for any opportunity, giant petrels do likewise, sheathbills beat about the place eating anything that is available off the stony ground and the occasional snow petrel, in their white splendor, fly by around the offshore ice. There are large numbers of young bull Antarctic fur seals about the shoreline, whimpering as they go about the place or resting with their thick furry necks and heads pointed skyward. Even the occasional Weddell seal, sausage like, is hauled out onshore, others are seen on ice hugging the coastline.
Added to all of this there is Captain Larsen’s story as he led his men to this island over a hundred years ago, after losing their ship the Antarctic, and spent the winter here in a small stone hut. We gaze in amazement at the remains of their abode and try and grasp a small measure of what they went through. These hardy souls were part of the Swedish South Polar Expedition, 1901-1904, lead by Otto Nordenskjöld.
Bloated with sensory overload, lunch becomes a welcome interlude.
The afternoon was spent cruising Fridtjof Sound, named after the great Norwegian explorer Fridjtof Nansen, explorer, scientist, statesman, winner of the Nobel Peace prize. The sound was filled with ice and it is another opportunity to hop into the Zodiacs and get up close to The Ice. We get close up views of Weddell seals, leopard seals, and penguins hauled out on flows.
The curtain to this amazing day drops with sunlight icebergs off in the distance as we sail down the Bransfield Strait. It creates a moment of pause for us all to reflect upon the natural wonder of this remote place, its delicate balance, and our responsibility to protect it in the face of climate change and its impacts—already visible here at the bottom of the world.
