It turned out to be another very busy and snowy day yesterday, as we started in Godthul Bay with kayaking, hiking, and Zodiac cruises. Got to see our first King penguins up close and personal, as well as reindeer (imported by someone a while back – definitely not endemic) at a distance.

In the afternoon we went to Grytviken, an old whaling port, and now the government seat of the country, with a whopping 18 inhabitants, most of whom are part of the British Antarctic Service.

Grytviken is also the location of the grave site of Antarctic explorer, Ernest Shackleton.

Below is our GPS Track for yesterday as well as much of the rest of Sunday. Zoom in to see the location of various sites on land. There’s lots of detail there.

The snow continued to come down. After leaving Larsen Harbour we returned to Cooper Bay. At Cooper Bay, the conditions had gotten worse, with swells making the boarding of Zodiacs pretty much impossible unless you wanted to be very cold and wet, and possibly even fall into the ocean. However, we were able to see a plethora of fur seals, elephant seals, and king penguins (they are HUGE – twice the height, at least, of the other penguins we’ve seen so far) on the distant shore, through the snow.

So we returned back to Larsen Harbour, and after lunch an announcement rang out that hardy souls could take a Zodiac tour of Drygalski Fjord if they wanted to. I looked out of the windows, and seeing snow coming in fast and rapid, and nearly horizontal, immediately grasped the opportunity. My more sedate (and possibly more intelligent) family members deferred, preferring for some strange reason to stay aboard the Explorer with all the comforts of home (warmth, dryness, etc.).

I bundled up tight – underwear, two layers of long underwear, trail pants, and waterproof pant covers on the bottom, three layers plus a heavy two layered parka over my torso, a balaclava and my dorky but very warm winter hat and Oakley sunglasses on top, along with a neck warmer for extra insurance. My feet had nearly knee-length SmartWool socks, and the great Arctic Muckboots on them. And my hands had three layers of gloves. Toss in a life vest for good measure and I was ready to face whatever mother nature would whip at me.

First there was Nanuck of the North, and now there's Jake of the South

My first reaction to the snow falling (whipping) at me when I entered the Zodiac was “Ow!”. That’s because it was not snow – it was hard little ice pellets. But I was man enough to stand the pain, and off we went, zipping into the miniature hail storm, glad to finally be free of the confines of the ship after being cooped up in it for nearly two days.

The scenery, what little of it we could discern between fogged up glasses and falling icy snow, looked pretty impressive, and hardy little fur seal pups swam in the water between the large masses of kelp to check us out.

I wisely had not taken any of my nicer camera gear (none of which is remotely waterproof) and instead relied on my Olympus Stylus Tough 8000 everything-proof point and shoot, and Bas’ Sanyo Xacti waterproof video camera (which rapidly ran out of batteries). Better yet, I had thought to bring along a short plastic monopod which I attached to the bottom of the Olympus and then used to shoot underwater video of kelp. Worked surprisingly well (although my editing software had fits – more on that in another blog I write for, later).

Here's what my underwater video camera rig looked like

One special thing that did happen while we were out was that the hotel manager Henrick and chef Daniel, along with their Zodiac driver Oscar, were personally delivering Swedish Glog (similar to Glühwein – a spiced, mulled, hot wine which is wonder in cold weather) to all of us braving the fierce weather.

The restaurant staff came out to recharge our batteries with some Swedish Glog. Yum.

There is a bit of irony in the fact that the worst weather we’ve experienced on our Antarctic voyage has been at the northern most stop of the trip so far.

I returned back to the National Geographic Explorer about an hour later, feeling great, at least until I realized my waterproof pant shell was not so waterproof, and the reason my buttocks were cold was because I had been effectively sitting in a puddle of freezing water for some time.

The deckhands did not have a fun time getting folks in and out of Zodiacs

Lots more photos from the afternoon, including Glog photos, are on my Flickr page.

There’s a video below with highlights of the trip, including underwater kelp shots below:

After about 30 hours of moderately unsettled seas we arrived at the island of South Georgia this morning, around 7:30am. We were informed during one of the several fascinating lectures yesterday to make sure to call it South Georgia or “the island of South Georgia”, but definitely not “South Georgia Island”.

The mountains and glacier ice in the Drygalski Fjord are stunning, as a lone albatross flies past

The other thing pointed out to me in the last day by Tom Ritchie was that while South Georgia is down around 55º south latitude (over 5º north of the area defined by the Antarctic Treaty to be Antarctica), it is still in the Antarctic Convergence. The Antarctic Convergence is a climatic zone which surrounds the Antarctic continent. While not universally agreed upon, there is a belief that islands within the Antarctic Convergence are also part of Antarctica.

However, whether South Georgia is part of Antarctica or the Subantarctic region doesn’t really matter much to us – what’s important is that it’s an island rich in wildlife and nature protection instituted after centuries of slaughtering seals and whales, and thus has an amazing natural and cultural history.

South Georgia is an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom, and is administered by the governor of the Falkland Islands. Money to support a small governmental presence on South Georgia is funded by strictly controlled fishing licenses in the waters surrounding South Georgia out to 200 miles (a prime location for Patagonian Toothfish, also known as Chilean Seabass) as well as eco-tourism.

South Georgia does a pretty amazing job to educate visitors about its efforts to preserve and restore the ecology of the area, requiring all visitors to review a video about the preservation efforts as well as the rules of visitation. Visitors must also sign a form which acknowledges they have seen the video as well as have disinfected and cleaned all their gear to avoid any foreign contaminants like seeds, stems, or food, from getting onto South Georgian soil. The packet of information the government of South Georgia provides to visitors is excellent too, including a detailed map of the island and key historic sites, a history of the area, information on the wildlife, and, of course, the list of rules of behavior.

Our view at breakfast - snow falling on the windows with beautiful fjord waters just barely visible in the distance

In any event, our arrival this morning did remind us that we are definitely in cold climes – be they Antarctic or sub-Antarctic, as the air temperature was just above freezing, and for the first time on our voyage we actually saw snow. Lots of snow. And four hours later the snow shows no sign of abating – if anything, it has gotten heavier.

Snow on the rocks looks almost like powdered sugar

Snowflakes fall on the railing of our balcony

The snow makes for some great views of the area, but is heavy enough to prevent us from safely going out for a landing or even a Zodiac cruise. We cruised all the way up into the Drygalski Fjord this morning with some spectacular but snow-obscured scenery and are now heading into Larsen Harbour in the hopes of finding a better anchorage. However, because the land around Larsen Harbour has been designated a vermin-free site (rats being an invasive species here), no landings will be possible.

Bits of glacier dot the water

Some immediate differences we noticed from the land and islands of the Antarctic Peninsula, however, are an abundance of kelp in the water (a variant grows in the area of the Antarctic Peninsula, but not heavily due to the benthic scraping of icebergs) and lots of green plant life on the rocks, including lush grasses and tussock grass.

Kelp grows here in large quantities compared to the little there is at the Antarctic Peninsula

Another difference from the Antarctic Peninsula - an abundance of green vegetation, including tussock grass

We woke to a cold and wet (snow/rain) day as we arrived at the south-eastern end of South Georgia. We were going to be starting our exploration of South Georgia from Cooper Bay, but the anchorage conditions were not good, so we’re heading to Drygalski Fjord.

However, the animal life signs at Cooper Bay were encouraging with lots of water fowl (petrels, I think) on or above the water, and in a brief span I counted dozes of seals frolicking in the water as well.

Our time zone just changed overnight as well, and we are now at GMT-2 (U.S. East Coast is at GMT-5 this time of year, for reference).

In case you were wondering, all of yesterday was spent at sea, with good size swells (and thus sporadic queasiness) and no obvious whale sightings, hence the relatively boring GPS track below. Also, no photos were taken yesterday. Gasp!

Among the plentiful life we found in Sandefjord Bay yesterday were a fair number of leopard seals, most of whom were resting on an ice floe in the middle of the bay. You may recall my post about the leopard seals we had previously encountered, but all of those were in the water.

The leopard seals on the ice floe provided us with an excellent photo opportunity, as well as to study them in greater detail.

Leopard seals, just resting

Among the things we noticed:

- Leopard seals are true carnivores. We could tell this because they have no molars, just pointy sharp flesh-rendering teeth. Their diet consists primarily of krill with penguin as a bonus (75% krill, 25% penguin, or so).

And here's the tongue as well - note the slick bottom side of the seal where moisture has flattened the fur, making it almost look bald

- Their fur becomes slick when wet. This was apparent when they lifted their bodies and we could see fur sticking up/out where they were dry, while on the part resting on the ice, the fur texture was not apparent, making them look shaved or bald (when in fact the fur was just slicked down).

- They really do have a very reptilian head.

- They are large and beautiful creatures (but I wouldn’t want to be swimming with one or have it think I was a penguin).

It may look like the seal is smiling, but I think it's looking at us and thinking 'dinner'

Many more photos I took of the leopard seals yesterday beyond those above can be seen on my Flickr pages, in significantly higher resolution.

Yesterday afternoon we arrived at the western end of the South Orkney Islands, more particularly at Coronation Island and the area known as Sandefjord Bay. And all this is still in what is officially deemed by treaty to be Antarctica.

As I previously related, the waters were alive with Chinstrap penguins, porpoising out of the water non-stop. Well, there was a reason for that. The land around the bay is teeming with life, mostly in the form of perhaps a half million Chinstrap penguins and thousands of fur seals.

In fact the land was so heavily populated that we had no place to make landfall, and instead took an hour and a half Zodiac tour of the area.

To give you an idea of how populated the bay was, below is a panorama of 11 photos of just one small part of the bay.

A panorama of a small part of the land around Sandefjord Bay in the South Orkney Islands featuring hugs numbers of Chinstrap penguins and fur seals

This small image, however, doesn’t easily show the tens of thousands of penguins on the rocks. To see those you really need to click on the above image, at which point you will get to a Flickr page where you can see a larger version of the image (still not enough good detail though). From there, click on the “original” link and you will be able to access the original panorama, which is 13,447 pixels across (about 11-13 times the width of the average computer display these days). Or you can click here for the Flickr page giving you that option.

Either way, if you do look at the detailed image look closely at the tops of the tall hills on the right side of the image. The little bumps on it are also penguins. No idea how they got up that high, but they are everywhere!

It’s a really rocky day here at sea as we head to South Georgia today, but we’ll try to get a few more posts up later today.