Departed on the cruise on the day of arrival in Punta Arenas
and was lucky to have good weather during most of the navigation to include the
stormy Drake Passage; no problems with seasickness of or rough seas. Below are images
of the strait of Darwin in route to Antarctica and first views of the icy
continent.
Lots of maritime traffic in Antarctic mostly of
tour ships and few military ones. First
below is the Aurora Mortimer famous for its COV-19 controversies. The ship was back in route to port when I photographed and when returning back in the next tour infection
emerged that led to an international fiasco--refer to this link for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Mortimer_(ship). Next is the rear view image of a Russian
Ice Breaker leased by Argentina to supply their Antarctic bases (notice the
smoke coming from the stacks while all other ships show no emission). The camo patterned ship that does not match
the environment is the Magellan Explorer. And finally is my cruise ship that
navigated without incident followed by a view of the Quark prowl entering one
of the many straits.
There were two landings per day that required donning winter
gear provided by the ship and transfer to the Zodiacs that delivered the
passengers to the shoreline; sometimes easy to a sandy beach or difficult to a
rocky shore with wave action. Upon
landing you were given free time to roam around in a limited zone.
The penguins will approach you without hesitation, look and
peck at your shoes. Humans were not
permitted to approach the wildlife but they were unhesitant to approach
you. Gentoo penguin colonies were the
most abundant with feeding chicks. The
following 4 images show them in action but notice in the 4th one a
white bird; it is a Snowy Sheathbill and it is there because it steals the food
that the Gentoo is feeding to the chick. At the moment the parent penguin
regurgitates, it flies in and steals the morsels from the chick. And the 5th image is that of the chinstrap
penguin that was not that numerous
I did not see many different species of flying birds but
among seen in descending order are the giant petrel, the blue eyed cormorant
and the skuas, both very common.
Saw a few mammals with the crab eating seal, a new species
for my list. In reality it mostly feeds in krill but then in the food chain is
the mostly predated by the leopard seals.
As krill is been harvested in large quantities for making as Omega/fish
oil pills, it is been depleted affecting not only these seals but also the
penguins, meaning that they have to stay at sea and traveling longer
distances. Sometimes the penguins return
with no food to feed the chicks reducing the size of their populations. Also seen were humpback whales and occasional
orcas but these were far away.
Antarctic landscapes are magnificent and could bore you to
death so I am just posting a few. Notice
the deep blues of the ice. In the second image below notice the pink and green
colors in the snow due algae growth; I was not aware of this. Antarctic is a treeless continent but no of
all vegetation.
This trip was in February
2020; about the same time the pandemic hit the world so I was lucky to have gone
being the last trip for that year. And 2021 does not look to promising. Another
delay for posting was that my 10 years old computer died and took me a while to
get one put together due to the scarcity of parts and particularly Video
Cards. Stay tuned