Wednesday 2nd March; 3rd day at sea
Woke up this morning (this is starting to sound like a blues song) and felt a little better. Breakfast is a lot easier than other meals as you simply get things for yourself, so there’s less hanging around. I still skipped the morning lecture and decided to stay on the bridge. This ship has an open bridge policy (as do most of the Antarctic tour ships) but for us that means you can go anywhere you like on the bridge as long as you don’t get in the way. Most ships like ours like the passengers to stay on the port side of the bridge out of harms way, and the American are apparently keen, in a fit of post-9/11 security paranoia, of making bridges out of bounds to everyone except the normal crew. Our ship by comparison tended to have a normal complement of one officer on watch, the occasional presence of the captain, at least 3 expedition staff (the people taking care of the shore landings), plus up to a dozen passengers, some birders, but usually quite a few auxiliary captains, i.e. people who had a yacht back home and could look at a chart with some degree of confidence. The startling thing about the bridge was that no one appeared to be steering. I was almost expecting a Sub-Lieutenant Phillips type saying ‘left-hand down a bit, right hand up a bit’, but obviously the auto-pilot knows where the ship’s supposed to be going, and the GPS gives you an accurate reading of where you are, plus a little digital map of the location. Accurate up to a point that is. One of the auxiliary captains claimed to have seen a GPS show the position of a ship in a Chilean fjord as being on dry land!
Going to the bridge was a smart move. Hannah Lawson (one of the expedition staff) pointed out a fur seal to me, and then spotted a whale spout at which point the non-crew people on the bridge stated leaping about in a state of high excitement. I was being fairly nonchalant about it, lounging in one of the chairs on the bridge, until a whale surfaced a few hundred metres in front of the ship, whereupon I sort of squeaked a sort of ‘good grief (or words to that effect). As the lecture was on dolphins and whales it was suspended and loads of people rushed up to the bridge and forward deck to have a look, though all they really saw was a few fins, either of a Sei Whale or a Fin Whale – the experts will still disagreeing about it a fortnight later.
After the lecture resumed, and I was still hanging around on the bridge, the first iceberg was spotted, there being a competition to predict when the first the first iceberg was spotted. The berg was a smallish one, but still almost as large as the ship, and curiously the person who won the competition not only got the time exactly right, but also spotted the iceberg as well!
Iceberg in the Drake Passage
During lunch we passed through the Nelson Strait, between Robert Island and Nelson Island in the South Shetlands, and then turned west into the Bransfield Strait and sailed along the southern and then western coasts of Robert Island and anchored off Aitcho Island (confusingly in a small group of islands known as the Aitcho Islands). As we’d had the briefing on landing and zodiac procedures before lunch, we could then get ashore fairly quickly.
Zodiacs are inflatable rubber boats, powered by out-board engines, the inflatable part being in sections so that if there’s a puncture the boat won’t sink. Getting into them from the gangway down from the ship is pretty simple – just a question of co-ordination with the waves. Getting out is rather harder. The zodiac can get very close to shore, but you have to wade the last few yards, hence you have to have waterproof trousers and Wellington boots, and you have to get out by swinging one leg over the inflatable side and into the water followed by the other. Fine if you’re relatively young and fit, but we had people in their 80s amongst the passengers – they seemed to cope with some help from the expedition staff. Travelling in a zodiac is OK if the weather’s calm; otherwise it can become quite, “interesting”, and occasionally “interesting” in the sense of “get me out of here”. Our first trip in these zodiacs was quite easy however.
Aitcho Island was about 2km long and too small to be on any of the maps we had with us. It’s rare amongst Antarctic islands in that it’s rather green – caused by some moss beds. It was also our first introduction to Antarctic Fur Seals, which were widely hunted in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but have now become endemic in the Antarctic Peninsula and the sub-Antarctic islands. They’re very territorial, even outside the breeding season, can give you a nasty bite if you let them, and will tend to snarl and snap at you if they think you’re invading their bit of beach. The island also had some youngish male Elephant Seals, which are basically too big to be dangerous, unless you’re careless enough to lie down and let them roll on top of you.
The penguins, however, were easily the most impressive creatures. They ambled around – the odd one heading into the centre of the island for some reason – the ones on this island were apparently renowned for being very inquisitive. I think not having land predators is the major reason for their not regarding humans as being anything to worry about. On the way back to the zodiac, I took a photo of a penguin (a Gentoo, I think) feeding a chick from about 5 feet. We were supposed to be about 5 metres away, but the penguins tended to wander around and get quite close to you. Most of the penguins were Gentoos and Adélies but there was apparently a single King Penguin on the island. For me the former are easily the cuter penguins; Kings and Emperors, which are really the archetypal penguin, look a bit snooty – it’s almost as if the name has gone to their heads. Later in the trip, when we landed at Fortuna Bay on South Georgia, the zodiacs were met by what appeared to be a welcoming committee of King Penguins who almost looked as though they were going to ask us for our passports. Being on the island was like being on an alien planet. The landscape was strange, and we were protected against the environment, almost like wearing space suits.
By 10:30 in the evening we’d had dinner, part of the David Attenborough series “Life in the freezer” had been shown in the Observation Lounge, and we were off to Deception Island at 3 a.m. All in all, a good start to the trip.
Going to the bridge was a smart move. Hannah Lawson (one of the expedition staff) pointed out a fur seal to me, and then spotted a whale spout at which point the non-crew people on the bridge stated leaping about in a state of high excitement. I was being fairly nonchalant about it, lounging in one of the chairs on the bridge, until a whale surfaced a few hundred metres in front of the ship, whereupon I sort of squeaked a sort of ‘good grief (or words to that effect). As the lecture was on dolphins and whales it was suspended and loads of people rushed up to the bridge and forward deck to have a look, though all they really saw was a few fins, either of a Sei Whale or a Fin Whale – the experts will still disagreeing about it a fortnight later.
After the lecture resumed, and I was still hanging around on the bridge, the first iceberg was spotted, there being a competition to predict when the first the first iceberg was spotted. The berg was a smallish one, but still almost as large as the ship, and curiously the person who won the competition not only got the time exactly right, but also spotted the iceberg as well!
Iceberg in the Drake PassageDuring lunch we passed through the Nelson Strait, between Robert Island and Nelson Island in the South Shetlands, and then turned west into the Bransfield Strait and sailed along the southern and then western coasts of Robert Island and anchored off Aitcho Island (confusingly in a small group of islands known as the Aitcho Islands). As we’d had the briefing on landing and zodiac procedures before lunch, we could then get ashore fairly quickly.
Zodiacs are inflatable rubber boats, powered by out-board engines, the inflatable part being in sections so that if there’s a puncture the boat won’t sink. Getting into them from the gangway down from the ship is pretty simple – just a question of co-ordination with the waves. Getting out is rather harder. The zodiac can get very close to shore, but you have to wade the last few yards, hence you have to have waterproof trousers and Wellington boots, and you have to get out by swinging one leg over the inflatable side and into the water followed by the other. Fine if you’re relatively young and fit, but we had people in their 80s amongst the passengers – they seemed to cope with some help from the expedition staff. Travelling in a zodiac is OK if the weather’s calm; otherwise it can become quite, “interesting”, and occasionally “interesting” in the sense of “get me out of here”. Our first trip in these zodiacs was quite easy however.
Aitcho Island was about 2km long and too small to be on any of the maps we had with us. It’s rare amongst Antarctic islands in that it’s rather green – caused by some moss beds. It was also our first introduction to Antarctic Fur Seals, which were widely hunted in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but have now become endemic in the Antarctic Peninsula and the sub-Antarctic islands. They’re very territorial, even outside the breeding season, can give you a nasty bite if you let them, and will tend to snarl and snap at you if they think you’re invading their bit of beach. The island also had some youngish male Elephant Seals, which are basically too big to be dangerous, unless you’re careless enough to lie down and let them roll on top of you.
The penguins, however, were easily the most impressive creatures. They ambled around – the odd one heading into the centre of the island for some reason – the ones on this island were apparently renowned for being very inquisitive. I think not having land predators is the major reason for their not regarding humans as being anything to worry about. On the way back to the zodiac, I took a photo of a penguin (a Gentoo, I think) feeding a chick from about 5 feet. We were supposed to be about 5 metres away, but the penguins tended to wander around and get quite close to you. Most of the penguins were Gentoos and Adélies but there was apparently a single King Penguin on the island. For me the former are easily the cuter penguins; Kings and Emperors, which are really the archetypal penguin, look a bit snooty – it’s almost as if the name has gone to their heads. Later in the trip, when we landed at Fortuna Bay on South Georgia, the zodiacs were met by what appeared to be a welcoming committee of King Penguins who almost looked as though they were going to ask us for our passports. Being on the island was like being on an alien planet. The landscape was strange, and we were protected against the environment, almost like wearing space suits.
By 10:30 in the evening we’d had dinner, part of the David Attenborough series “Life in the freezer” had been shown in the Observation Lounge, and we were off to Deception Island at 3 a.m. All in all, a good start to the trip.
posted by Iain Burke at 30.1.06
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home