Bowermaster’s Antarctica — St Andrews Bay, South Georgia

by Jon Bowermaster on

I miswrote.

The other day I suggested that South Georgia was like some kind of Magic Kingdom envisioned by Disney. Today I’m revising that; it’s more like something old Walt might have created after a visit while ingesting heavily of magic mushrooms.

Late this afternoon I found myself crossing a wide, six-inch deep pond on St. Andrews ringed by a portion of the 300,000 King penguin colony that bases here, both adults and their several-month old chicks. Most of the chicks were molting, meaning their thick brown down was itching and beginning to fall off, leaving behind an exterior shell that made them look like some kind of “Cousin It” penguins … half-tuxedoed, half covered by wildly sprouting brown tufts of fur.

Everywhere I looked it is surreal. Tall mountains, peaks dipped in snow. Hanging glaciers (though definitely receding) separating the green valleys. Six-foot tall tussock grass running straight to the sea. A wide river of glacier melt running towards the sand beach, lined on each side by penguins, with sizable fur seals surfing and feeding in its fast-running center.
I’ve seen big wildlife gatherings in other parts of the world. Migrating caribou in Labrador. Herds of giraffe running along tongues of hardened lava in west Kenya. The most giant of penguin colonies in Antarctica. But nothing prepared me for both the size and oddity of this mass. The chicks, who unlike other penguin species, are born over a four or five month range and stay with their parent for up to thirteen months, follow mom or dad for all that time … everywhere.

The King lays a single egg and builds no nest, holding it on its feet under a fold of skin. Unlike the smaller penguin breeds, Kings occupy their rookeries all year and travel several hundred kilometers to find their food, mostly lantern fishes which they find at three hundred to one thousand feet below the surface.

Adult and chick march nearly lockstep, braying constantly, bumping into each other like some kind of Three Stooges act. Two weeks after they are born they are nearly the same size as their parents, two and a half feet tall. Imagine if humans birthed the same way, with a son or daughter the same height as his father when he is two weeks old.

As the sun lowers behind the ridge tops the pond brightens and the brown down of the chicks turns golden. It’s not quite as bright as the brilliant yellow-gold plumage of the adult’s neck and throat, but getting there.

There seems to be lots of wandering among the Kings. Unusual among penguins, they are not a vary fidel bunch. I sit for an hour and watch trios squabble, usually two females fighting over a male. They walk in threes, two of them fwapping their short wings at each other, like big city dilettantes on a crowded street. While most penguins, and albatross are faithful to a mate for life, among King’s the divorce rate is near 80 percent. Blame it on timing. When they arrive back at the island after months of feeding, their partner may still be months away. Given limited food reserves they cannot afford to wait faithfully for a late returning mate … so …

Antarctic Cruise Ship Freed by High Tides

by Kraig Becker on

The Antarctic cruise ship M/V Ocean Nova, the ship that ran aground yesterday, has been freed from the rocks by the high tide, and is now steaming back to Ushuaia, Argentina for inspection. High winds and pushed the vessel, which was carrying 106 passengers and crew, onto the rocks in Marguerite Bay, off the Antarctic Peninsula.

Before departing the area, divers inspected the Ocean Nova and found no evidence of damage to the hull. According to updates from Quark Expeditions, the company that operates the cruise ship, video of the hull was examined by maritime experts who declared it safe to get underway. If the vessel passes inspection, as expected, it will begin its next voyage on the 22nd of February.

Meanwhile, all of the passengers that were aboard the ship were transferred to another vessel, the M/V Adventure Clipper, yesterday and were also en route back to Ushuaia. No one was injured in the incident, and everyone is said to be in good spirits despite the interruption to their vacation.

Fortunately there doesn’t seem to have been any environmental damage done to the region either. Since the hull was not breached, there was no leaking of fuel or other contaminants, and the fragile Antarctic environment appears to have been left unscathed by this most recent accident. Patrick Shaw, the President of Quark Expeditions is quoted as saying, “We are grateful that no environmental damage occurred and that all travelers who were aboard Ocean Nova are safe.”

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Cooper Bay, South Georgia Island

by Jon Bowermaster on

I saw South Georgia Island for the first time from about ten miles out, on a gusty, windy, blue-sky morning. Though we’d just sailed eight hundred miles east and north from the tip of Antarctica, giant tabular icebergs greeted us, nearly blocking the entryway to Cooper Bay. These big icebergs had broken off the Larsen Ice Shelf since 2002 and slowly made their way here, where they now sit grounded, sentinels placed as welcome mats or warning.

I love seeing a place for the first time, convinced – like falling in love at first sight – that it is that very first glimpse that makes its biggest impression. My expectations were vast. While I’d heard about South Georgia for years – that its steep mountain peaks were covered by year-round snow, that more than one hundred and fifty glaciers filled its valleys, that tussock-covered fields spread up the hills from the sea, that it’s wildlife was out of this world – I had no mental images.

Now I have them. Big ones.
There are only a couple hundred volcanic islands in the South and Mid-Atlantic. Ascension, St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha, the Falklands and South Georgia are the best known.

South Georgia definitely has the most exotic reputation, in part thanks to Shackleton, in part due to its whaling history, but largely for its otherworldly menagerie.

Strong morning winds kept us trolling off the rocky coast for several hours searching for the appropriate approach. When we rounded the southeastern corner into Cooper Bay the gusts diminished as if with the snap of a finger. While the tall mountains and hanging glaciers were astonishing, the best part for me – after more than five weeks among the whiteness of Antarctica – was the green grass running down the hills to the sea. But it was when I raised binoculars to my eyes that I got the biggest jolt.

The beaches were, well, how do I put this. I’ve never seen such a mass of giant living, breathing sausage and blubber amassed in one place outside of a crowded East Coast beach on the 4th of July. Thousands of fur seals, hundreds of Weddell seals and hundreds more of the giant, two-ton female elephant seals, spread over the rock and sand beach … everywhere. And this is nothing. As I stare, mind-boggled, my friend Pete Pulesten tells me he first came here twenty-five years ago, and a couple months earlier in the breeding season, when thousands of horny, multi-ton male elephant seals line the beach like bratwurst. “That is when this place is truly wild,” says Pete.

South Georgia was first seen in 1675 by a Brit named Antoine de la Roche, who’d been blown far off course while rounding Cape Horn; the next time it was sighted was nearly one hundred years later, by the Spanish ship “Leon” who named it Ile de St. Pierre after the saint’s day (July 1) on which it was seen. It wasn’t until British explorer Captain James Cook, on his second voyage around the world in 1775, that South Georgia was mapped. Unfortunately for Cook, he thought he’d discovered the southern continent, Antarctica. When he rounded the southern tip of South Georgia, in the opposite direction than how we’d arrived this morning, and discovered he was looking due west, he named the point Cape Disappointment. He claimed the island for his homeland, sent home a report on the island’s “rich seas” and continued on his way.

Rich seas? That’s an understatement even today. In just a couple of hours, here’s what I saw: Penguins (Kings, chinstraps, Gentoo and Macaroni). Wandering and black-browed albatross. Southern and northern Giant petrels, as well as snow, white-chinned, the common diving and Wilson’s storm petrels. The South Georgia (Imperial) Shag. Hundreds of sheathbills and kelp gulls. Special terns and a pipit found nowhere else on earth. The south polar skua. Thousands and thousands of seals (fur and southern elephant). And, bizarrely, roaming in the background, sizable herds of reindeer (it’s a long story, but they were introduced by whalers more than one hundred years ago and they’ve not yet been exterminated).

That’s all in just a couple hours. The sky was filled with flying critters, the shallows swimming with seals and the beaches chockablock with giant meat. (Lunching? Giant petrels literally disappear inside a dead fur seal, ripping its guts out with its sharp beak, such that the cadaver seemed to be flopping up and down on the beach on its own accord.)

My first impression? Walt Disney must have visited this place during his most productive years and created all of his magic kingdom’s based on South Georgia’s reality. Rugged mountains, covered by glacier and lush green tussock, rimmed by tens of thousands of flying, swimming, snorting, feeding, wrestling, playing critters. Everywhere.

Antarctic Cruise Ship Runs Aground

by Kraig Becker on

The Antarctic cruise ship the M/V Ocean Nova has run aground in Marguerite Bay, near the Antarctic Peninsula, with 106 passengers and crew aboard. According to this story, from The Guardian, there is no immediate threat to anyone on board the vessel.

Quark Expeditions, the tour operator running the Ocean Nova, is posting updates for the press on their website, and reports that ship is not leaking fuel, and that the captain was waiting for high tide to return in the hopes that it would help in freeing the ship from the rocks. Since that dispatch however, two high tides have come and gone, and there is no word that the ship has been freed. Meanwhile, another ship, the M/V Clipper Adventurer is en route to pick-up the passengers and return them to Ushuaia, Argentina.

Jon Bowermaster, a frequent contributor to Gadling, has updated his blog this morning with information on the incident, including his own thoughts. He was in the region in December, and feels that it will take unusually high tides to dislodge the ship and get it back on its way.

This is the second incident of a ship running aground in Antarctica in the past few months. Back in December the M/V Ushuaia ran aground in Wilhelmina Bay, and last year the Explorer sank after hitting an iceberg. These incidences help to underscore the dangers of traveling in the Antarctic.

UPDATE: The M/V Ocean Nova has been freed by high tides.

More ice cold news we’ve covered in the past – Brrrrr!


Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Crossing the Scotia Sea

by Jon Bowermaster on


When we left Elephant Island midday yesterday we formally left Antarctica behind. I’ve been to Antarctica many times since 1989 and every time I leave it in my trail, whether by C-130 cargo plane, small sailing boat or expedition ship it is with no small regret. It is a spectacular corner of the world that gets in your blood like no other I’ve experienced. Remote and foreboding it can also be intimate and fragile. The only good thing about leaving is that I am already looking forward to my next return.

We have endured a remarkable stretch of good weather these past six weeks, and the luck continues. Strong winds were expected during the night, which never arrived. As a result, the Scotia Sea – lying just east of the Drake Passage, sharing a similar reputation for wind and storm – is rolling but not rough.

We are now following directly in the traces of Shackleton’s sail for freedom in the twenty-three-and-a-half foot long “James Caird” and I stand on the aft deck for a long time this morning trying to imagine being out here in such a small craft. The eight hundred miles took the six men in the wooden lifeboat cum sailboat sixteen days; we’ll do it in about two. They had no idea what they’d find when they arrived, though they knew there was an active whaling station at Stromness and that the prevailing winds would (hopefully) be at their back. We know pretty much where we are headed and what we’ll find.

They had sailed due north from Elephant Island in hopes of quickly finding warmer temperatures, which did not work so well, though the winds out of the southwest did push them at a sixty to seventy mile a day pace. But the cold continued. “The sprays froze upon the boat and gave bows, sides, and decking a heavy coat of mail,” Shackleton wrote about what he described as “the boat journey.” “This accumulation of ice reduced the buoyancy of the boat, and to that extent was an added peril … we could not allow the load of ice to grow beyond a certain point and in turns we crawled about the decking forward, chipping and picking at it with the available tools … the weight of the ice that had formed in her and upon her was having its effect and she was becoming more like a log than a boat.”

Fifteen days after leaving Elephant Island, they sighted South Georgia. Reduced to straining the last of their fresh water through gauze to clear it of hair from their caribou sleeping bags, they spent one last night just offshore, unable to land due to giant seas. When they finally did land, in a cove that ultimately did not give them access to the rest of the island, they crawled into a cave and slept … though Shackleton stayed awake as long as he could that first night to watch over the “James Caird,” still their lifeline, as it bobbed in the surf just off the rocks.

Just as Elephant Island lives large in history due Shackleton link, South Georgia – for all its magical allure of big animals and grand landscape – is part and parcel of “the Boss’s” myth. I’m sure while we are here these next five or six days we’ll catch sight of his ghost on several occasions.