Date: 12th Jan, 2011
We woke up to peep through our cabin window looking for a stunning scenery and it was right in front of us as expected. It was absolutely gorgeous to look at floating ice bergs with amazing glaciers in the background. The ship was parked close to Paulet island which is close to the Antarctic peninsula. We quickly got dressed up and joined the rest of the passengers in the dining room for breakfast. As usual, Lynn had made a plan after consultation with the ship captain. Everybody looked very happy with a constant grin on their faces that seem to suggest "Yes, we made it!". The plan was to land at Paulet island followed by Devil's island. We had absolutely no clue on what to expect in either of these islands. After a short zodiac cruise we were on the island. The situation here was quite similar to the Salisbury plain in south georgia except for ice and type of penguins. The island hosted a massive collection of Adelie penguins which we haven't had a chance to see during this trip so far. The Adelie penguins are neither shy nor curious. They seem to be interested in getting along with their life and not bothered with our presence on the island. A french explorer d'Urville named these penguins Adelie after his wife's name. These penguins use stones to build their nests. It is quite a common situation to see a penguin steal the stones religiously brought by its neighbor. Apparently the stones are used as tokens of currency in this strange penguin world. It is also one of the factors that the females consider before mating with the male penguins.
We walked along the shore to a high cliff where we could see plenty of blue-eyed shags living harmoniously with the Adelie penguins. I had lots of ideas for taking photos here - penguins getting into water, jumping into water, feeding the chicks, pruning themselves, etc. Got some good shots of penguins and blue-eyed shags on these cliffs. The weather turned out to be great with some light sunshine. We had gone through the pain of carrying a tripod after seeing a fog filled island from our ship but I never got a chance to use it on the island. Both penguin and shag chicks looked like small brown balls carefully guarded by their parents. They had not yet molted for the season. There were lots of skuas wandering around looking for an opportunity to grab the chicks. We could even see two skuas tearing apart a poor chick. It was a great site to watch the penguins hopping on/off small sheets of ice near the island. We just sat there watching some routine penguin activity.
The plan for the afternoon was to land on Devil's island but due to bad weather we had to abandon this plan. Instead we were taken on a zodiac cruise that brought us close to the ice bergs floating around in the Weddell sea. We got to see some amazing ice formations and some of them reflected bright turquoise blue. There were some huge tabular shaped ice bergs and some small sheets where penguins took rest before continuing on hunting for more krill. Soon enough we came across a sheet of ice where a lazy Weddell seal was taking a nap. There were about 2-3 zodiacs in all directions taking pictures of this giant seal on the sheet of ice. It woke up occasionally realizing all the star-like attention it has been getting that afternoon. After about 2hrs of cruising we returned back to our ship. Apparently, our fellow passengers who were on other zodiacs saw more seals than us. They showed us pictures of leopard seal and crabeater seals. We did get a bit jealous but glad that at least some of us got to see more action on the floating ice bergs.
Based on the previous zodiac cruise experience, we decided to put on 2 pairs of gloves and 3 layers of socks. Apparently this turned out to be not enough for a long zodiac cruise. The feet and fingers were quite frozen by the end of the cruise. This is probably the effect of cold winds though the temperature itself was not very low. There were lots and lots of gigantic ice bergs floating all over the Weddell sea and it was quite a challenge for the captain to navigate through them. Low light conditions are great for photographing these ice bergs to highlight the turquoise blue color reflecting from them. Due to lack of phytoplanktons, we did not see a lot of wildlife in comparison to other islands we have visited during this trip earlier.
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