Elephant seal aerobics

I so wish I had video of this: an elephant seal in Fortuna Bay actually moving.

The seal had been on the grassy slope above the beach and the process of working its way back down towards the water was only slightly faster and less laborious than my recent climbs up four flights of stairs to my apartment with a bad knee.

The Whew! I'm exhausted reaction upon finally reaching our goals were pretty identical, though.

Elephant seal yoga

In Fortuna Bay. The onlookers were clearly amazed by this display.

Iceberg on a sunny day

A closeup of the iceberg. I like the way the scalloped shapes on the top mimic the mountains behind it.

More landscapes

More of the beautiful surroundings in Fortuna Bay, including the only waterfall I saw in South Georgia.

The even bigger picture

The mountains around Fortuna Bay, seen from the ship. If you zoom in, you can see tiny penguins and seals by the water.

The bigger picture

In South Georgia, I took pictures of the animals, I took pictures of the mountains, but I seldom managed to combine the two. This picture from Fortuna Bay has mountains, snow, a glacier, seals, penguins, and a couple of petrels hanging out by the clump of tussac grass.

You want a piece of me?

Not a baby, and a seal that wasn’t interested in appearing cute.

I’m not sure if it was our zodiac that was pissing him or her off, but I like this picture because it’s the only time I’ve seen a seal baring its teeth. During the briefings about maintaining a safe distance from the wildlife, we were warned to be especially careful of seals because they bite. And if anyone was bitten by a seal, the cruise would be over for everyone because we’d have to head back to Chile for medical care.

A seal actually jumped into one of the zodiacs when it was ferrying passengers, and everybody had to huddle as far away from it as possible while the driver returned to the ship. The passengers disembarked and the seal wranglers on the expedition crew persuaded the seal to go back into the water.

A newborn

I'm no seal expert, but this baby, the tiniest one I saw, can't have been more than a couple of days old.

Kids and teenagers

When playing turns to squabbling.

Sunday bird blogging

A gentoo taking a stroll past a seal crash pad in Elsehul Bay.

The colors of the seals' fur coordinates perfectly with the rocks behind them.

A rarity

This adorable baby in Fortuna Bay isn't an albino; the white morph in Antarctic fur seals is seen in only 1 or 2 per thousand.

Family time

These seals were in Ocean Harbor. I like how in the family on the right, dad is watching the kids while mom crashes.

I don't know if the adult in the picture on the left is the mother or just an adult guarding a nursery, but I love how the young seal on the right has already got the “look straight up with your eyes closed” fur seal posture down.

Update: Looking at these pictures drives me a little crazy because of the bad cropping. But I have to remind myself that they were taken from a zodiac, where not only were we rocking and bouncing, but I was also shooting around and over fellow passengers. (If it was calm enough and we were stationary sometimes we were allowed to stand in the zodiacs. But I took a lot of these pictures while we were moving.) So I make the best pictures I can out of what I got.

I think we all need some baby seals

Fortunately, South Georgia was full of them. Here's a nursery in Fortuna Bay.

Saturday reflections

Taking a brief break from the Southern Hemisphere, here is another look at the koi pond in the Botanical Gardens in Miami.

Elephant Island

This is where the Endurance crew landed after their harrowing escape from the frozen Weddell Sea, and the starting point for Shackleton's insanely brave voyage to South Georgia.

We weren't going to try to land there, but the captain had hoped to bring the ship close enough to allow us to see Point Wild (named for Frank Wild), where there is a memorial to the Endurance crew that lived there for four and a half months before Shackleton's return, and Luis Pardo, the Chilean captain who succeeded in rescuing them after two previous attempts had failed.

Unfortunately, that side of the island was completely fogged in; you couldn't see land at all from the ship. But when we sailed around to the other side of the island, it was clear and sunny.

Now those are some flukes!

And then in Paradise Bay we saw half a dozen humpbacks blowing and rolling and diving. This picture actually captures the patterns on the whale's flukes, which are as distinctive as fingerprints.

I have not yet subscribed to Happy Whale, which keeps a database of whale fluke images and allows you to track whales that you see, because I am not likely to see enough whales around Manhattan to make a subscription worthwhile.

Which is not to say that I won't. I'm curious where this gorgeous creature is headed.

That's better

Humpbacks are often more cooperative with photographers because they frequently show off their magnificent tails when they dive. This was the first picture I managed to get, while the ship was repositioning to Paradise Bay during lunch.

Whales

No orcas or minke whales on this trip—the only whales I saw were humpbacks and fin whales, like this (presumably) handsome fellow near Elephant Island.

Fin whales are the second largest species, after blue whales, and I did see a few of them, but “seeing” means, if you're lucky, a glimpse of the massive back and that surprisingly dainty fin, as in this picture, or the whale's blow, and maybe a shadow under the water.

There was apparently a blue whale in the pod by Elephant Island, which the expedition experts identified by its blow. I have never seen a blue whale and I don't think I saw the whale blow in question, but at least now I can say that I was blue whale-adjacent.

Bonus bird blogging

One more picture from Elsehul Bay. I wish I had been able to get better pictures of these albatrosses nesting in the tussac grass, but we weren't that close. (These are gray headed and black-browed albatrosses, but you probably have to take my word for that.)

Sunday bird blogging

In addition to penguins and albatrosses and petrels, South Georgia has ducks.

Well, one kind of duck. Here's a South Georgia pintail in Elsehul Bay.

Saturday reflections

An iceberg near Paradise Bay (before the sun came out.)

Paradise Bay, 2018

I mentioned that I saw glaciers calving in Paradise Bay in 2018.

I remembered the glaciers as being huge, really awe-inspiring. What I saw last month was beautiful, but not on the scale I had remembered, so I went back to look at my pictures from 2018. Even assuming that we might have been in a different part of the bay when I took these pictures—we did go ashore by Brown Station, though we couldn't go inside—I didn't see anything like these glaciers last month.

I found some articles online confirming that there has indeed been significant melting/retreating of the glaciers in Paradise Bay. I shouldn't be surprised; I know Antarctica isn't immune to climate change. But it breaks my heart all the same.

Glaciation

Some of the glaciers slipping down the mountains towards the water in Paradise Bay. (You'll have to zoom in on some of the pictures for a better look.)

For a sense of scale, you can see Brown Station in the picture on the lower left.

Till the landslide brought it down

I remember seeing glaciers calve in Paradise Bay seven years ago, but this time we got an avalanche.

Ice ice baby

Looking out over the center of Paradise Bay from a zodiac, you can see all of the ice that we had to sail through. Bumpety-bumpety, scrape, scrape, scrape.

Paradise

More of the stunningly beautiful mountains surrounding Paradise Bay.

Brown Station

Almirante Brown is an Argentine research station in Paradise Bay. I like the way the red jackets in the zodiac match the buildings.

Sunday bird blogging

An Antarctic cormorant nest with two juveniles in Paradise Bay in Antarctica.

This bird is also called the blue-eyed shag, a more charming if less accurate name—their eyes are actually dark, with a blue eyering.

Saturday reflections

Early morning outside Neko Harbor.

Have a seal break

 

Between class prep, physical therapy, and a dead battery in my car, I haven't had any free time this week. But here are some seals in South Georgia to make you smile. Anyway, they worked for me.

One more abstract

A glacier on the mountains overlooking Gold Harbour in South Georgia.

Abstract ice

Closeups of some of the beautiful patterns made by glacier ice, rock, and snow in Antarctica. Water and pressure and erosion can create such beauty.

As long as it's outside our bodies, that is. I injured my knee during the cruise—I'm not sure, but I think it was when I was getting into bed one night and the ship's motion made me land awkwardly. I really twisted it, and I remember yelping. But although it ached a little, it didn't cause me any real issues until I came home, and the small ache just got progressively worse. By the time I finally got in to see a doctor last week I could no longer walk down stairs, or get up from a sitting position without pushing or pulling with my arms. Anti-inflammatories and a cortisone shot have helped a lot, and today was my first session of what will be at least six weeks of physical therapy.

Something a little more abstract

The kelp that lined some of the beaches in South Georgia made beautiful abstract patterns.

I learned on this trip that kelp is not actually a plant, it is algae. I don't think this knowledge will ever be relevant to my life, but that's okay. I like knowing things.