[Note: Data is crazy expensive; will post as many updates as possible here but am not checking email]
Just after four o’clock this afternoon Zodiacs started to leave the Expedition for the rocky coast of Aitcho Island, one of the South Shetland islands. Excitement was high. Up ahead on the shore we could see thousands of penguins walking around or lying down or running after each other in their consistently comical way. It was cold, but not painfully so.
As we got closer, we made the interesting discovery that penguin colonies stink. From several hundred metres out we could smell the stench of what the guides delicately call ‘guano’. Later on I discovered that when a penguin excretes, the stinking viscous substance travels approximately three feet from the originating orifice. If the penguin keeps walking throughout this process the end result is a line on the ground, the first section of which is perfectly straight before it ends in a wider, wavier section. Depending on what the penguin has been eating, the line can be white or red.
The first colony we saw was of Gentoo penguins. They are roughly 60cm tall with a characteristic orange beak. They are intensely curious creatures, reminding me of the mockingbirds in the Galapagos. Only a moment or two after I had reached land, one of them came over to investigate. I stood still and he had a peck at my boots, then checked to see if my waterproof pants were edible. Finding they were not, he had a look up at me directly. Apparently seeing little of interest, he continued on about his penguin business.
It is now coming towards the end of breeding season, so what we were seeing were offspring that were on the verge of being able to go into the water and fend for themselves. Once they enter the sea they will stay there for the next eight months, re-emerging only to breed for themselves towards the end of this year. Before they can do that though they need to moult, losing the cuddly outer covering of fur. As we visited today many of them were very nearly there, and the chief guide later said that when the Expedition is back here in two weeks, the island will be almost abandoned. The patches of fur can look quite funny, and I saw several Mohawks. It’s a stressful time for them, apparently, though presumably less stressful than being eaten by one of the skewer birds, many of which we saw flying around. These large dark-brown birds steal the baby penguins whenever they can, but now all of the penguins on Aitcho are big enough to defend themselves from avian attack.
Aitcho is a tiny volcanic island, hardly land at all. It curves east to west, and we walked out to the western edge. At that part of the island there are elephant seals. The ones we saw were still adolescent but were already massive creatures, multiples of times bigger than anything we saw in the Galapagos. They get up to two tonnes when fully grown. Thankfully, they can’t move very quickly on land. On the way over we saw whale bones, their original owner long deceased. The rib was about the size of a telephone pole. There were several vertebrae also. If you were cutting a section from the trunk of a large tree with the intention of sitting on it later, they were about that size.
It was great to walk around and smell the smells (you get used to the penguin odour very quickly) and feel the air and look at the bleakness of the island. There really is nothing there but penguins and seals – no trees or vegetation or water. It’s beautiful, but it’s a very stark beauty.
Earlier in the day we had a pleasant surprise when some whales turned up and showed an interest in the ship, swimming around it for a while about 100m away. I happened to be outside on the top level at the time – the first sign was the famous jet of water up in the air as they surfaced and breathed out. It’s more of a puff of mist than the geyser-style expulsion I had in mind. The resident expert said there were at least three whales and maybe as many as seven, and he was able to identify them as fin whales. When they were close you could see the top of their backs, like a small low-lying temporary island, and then when they dived down again the fin on their back was evident for a moment. They grow up to 20m in length. And I was particularly pleased that these were fin whales as I am almost certain that that is the species of the whale skeleton on the ceiling of the Natural History Museum in faraway Dublin.
While we were up there looking at the whales we also saw an albatross, which circled the boat repeatedly. The resident bird watcher was not able to give me an entirely convincing explanation for why this would be so, though he did say that the albatross had been around the boat on and off since yesterday morning. Or at least, he was almost sure it was the same albatross. The bird watcher is a nervous sort of creature himself, bouncing from person to person and conversation to conversation without leaving many traces of information behind.
We had one lecture early in the day, and one after. The first was on Shakleton, and was a standard but well-told tale of his adventures in this part of the world. The speaker clearly knew a lot about polar explanation in general and Shakleton in particular. He also had copies of many of the photographs of Hurley, the photographer, which make the story live again. I had never seen many of them before. The evening lecture was on photography, a series of useful tips on how to inject more life and interest into your pictures.
Just before dinner I was in the cabin when my roommate came in, and I had a chat with him for a while. His opening comment was that today was good, but he had travelled so much and seen so much that he hadn’t felt any ‘adrenaline’ (his word) from it. ‘Is that so,’ I answered, looking from my pillow to his thoughtfully. I told him bluntly that if he was looking for adrenaline bursts off a GAP tour in the Antarctic, he had signed up for the wrong trip.
But we talked more after that and he clarified his position somewhat. He is young enough to work but doesn’t have to, as he has various bits of property and what not that keep him going. He gave me lots of tips on how I should be managing my finances, and said he has often thought of writing a book on the subject. He spoke as though he is very wealthy, although if he was that minted he would not be sharing a second-floor cabin with me (and there should be a third guy). But he is bored, and does not know what to do with himself. He has no wife and no children, and I understood from the context that he has never been married. He spent quite a while telling me how he had withdrawn from technology, doesn’t have a mobile phone, doesn’t use the internet, even though he used to work in telecoms until he retired a few years ago. In the end I felt sorry for him. He’s in the position that many people dream of, not having to work and having the freedom to travel. But everywhere he looks he sees boredom, and I think he has found that the race he has won is not the one he should have been running.
Anyway. He went for a shower and I made my egress, and I had a very pleasant dinner at a table for 10 at which myself and a man called Warren were the only males. One of the girls at the table has a particularly enormous zoom lens for her camera, a 100 – 400mm, which I had seen her with earlier. I asked her about it, and in the course of her answer she mentioned in an off-hand way that if you’re spending ten grand on a holiday, you might as well spend another two grand on a lens to get good pictures. Quite so, I answered. I would imagine her cabin is not down on the second floor, but I was not indelicate enough to ask.
Once the conversation fragmented I spent most of the meal chatting to Warren, who I have spoken to several times now. He’s on the ship with his daughters, of which there are either two or three, but he never eats with them for some reason. He’s a thoughtful chap and I enjoyed our conversation.
And so to bed, early and tired and happy. Right now we are in the lee of Deception Island, which is keeping the seas calm. Great day, great introduction to this part of the world, and onwards towards the ice tomorrow.
