A very full last day in Antarctica!

This is the last day in Antarctica – tonight, we start heading North through the Drake passage again.   I’m not really looking forward to it, but I think that this last week improved my tolerance for waves … that and the scopolamine patches…  let’s hope….

We made the most of this last day: we were not able to do the planned hike, because the waves at the landing site where just too high. (Joe took advantage of the early morning rise to take some pictures at sunrise (or at least near sunrise – because things start getting brighter around 3am). 

 So instead, we sailed into the collapsed caldera of a huge volcano, called Deception Island). Inside the Caldera, the sea is much calmer since it is protected by the rim of the volcano, and we could land there safely.   Yesterday, I said it was a dormant volcano, but I was wrong.  It is indeed quite active, with the last eruption dating to 1969.   There is a Spanish base on the island that monitors the volcano by tracking the level of the sea floor.  It rose by about 30cm last year, which indicates some activity and the possibility of an upcoming eruption.  All was calm this morning tough. 

 We stopped at a little bay that was formed by a secondary eruption.   We took a short walk to the rim of this secondary crater and admired the lunar landscape.   There is much less snow here, probably due to the geothermal activity.  In fact, when one digs into the sand just a little bit, the puddle that forms is quite warm.  The sea itself though is still very cold….

From there we went to Whaler’s bay, also inside the caldera, which hold the remnants of a large whale blubber processing site. 

There is much more human history in Antarctica then I expected – most of which has to do with whalers, and some with explorers. 





 The entire place has now been reclaimed by the locals:  Fur seals (note that they have little ears, no other seals have ears).

and sea gulls.  Note the steam coming out of the edge of the water, due to the geothermic activity.  I was hoping that this meant that the water is warm, but it is not….  Only the very edge is warm, but within a few feet, it is back to its normal temperature – just around freezing. 

But of course, that did not deter me!  If I see a body of water I have not yet experienced, I need to jump in!  The expedition crew organized a plunge for those of us who were interested (about 25- to 30 of us).  I just could not resist adding “the Antarctic ocean” to the list of places where I have swum (“swum” is a bit of an overstatement – did not do laps….  Still, it counts!

 In the afternoon, we did our last landing, at Hannah’s point.  What a great place for our last walk in Antarctica!  Of course, there were a lot of penguins!
 The chicks here are already a lot bigger than the ones we encountered previously:  the snow here melts earlier, which means that the parents can start laying eggs earlier, the eggs hatched earlier, etc… 


 So the chicks here are about the same size as the parent, in fact probably a bit fatter, because they don’t need to work (go to sea to find food) for their meals:  they just harass the poor parents, until those relent and give them what they want (again, penguins and humans have a lot in common….). In the chicks defense though, they cannot go and fish by themselves, because they do not yet have the water proof layer is feather-  they are covered with down, which makes them extra cute and fluffy.  But, as any backpacker would tell you, down is useless when wet ....

 These big chicks are very curious, and hungry, and they investigate everything around:  Here the chick is trying to see if this flag pole – and particularly the red flapping flag – are edible.
The chicks now are no longer in the nests – in fact there are no longer any nests around – they all run around, and recognize each other by sound (they all sound the same to me, but the parents can recognize they own chicks, and vice versa).  We saw a lot of fat little chicks running after their much leaner parents, trying to get food out of them.  It was quite comical!

 We then met a large number of elephant seals (so named because of their size and because adult males’ noses resemble a trunk).  These are young adult males, come to shore to moult.  They live very peacefully with the penguins – they eat almost exclusively squid.  Besides, when they are moulting, that’s all they do – they do not go out to feed, nor hunt: for several weeks, they just lay there.  These are young adult males.  The females molt later in the season, because they first have to regain strength and fat after having fed their babies.

 The ones who have not yet started molting are still in the water.
We also saw giant petrels nesting and soaring:  they are related to the albatross, and just amazing to see in flight:  they barely flap their wing – maybe once or twice to start, and then they just glide on the winds.  That’s why they can fly such amazing distances, they use very little energy. 

Finally, go to see a very small patch of the plant that finishes the entire flora of Antarctica, as well as colorful lichens – these are arctic lichens:  the only explanation for their presence is that the arctic tern carried some of their spores along during their very long migration. In the same area, there are fossils that proof that Antarctica once had a subtropical climate....

We made an effort to stay up until sunset – at 10:50pm.