Journal of a Sabbatical

February 3, 2000

a toast to the boss

Position:

Gold Harbour, South Georgia
54-37 S
035-56 W

Grytviken, South Georgia
54-17 S
036-30 W

Jason Harbour, South Georgia
54-11 S
036-35 W

Today's Bird Sightings:
wandering albatross
black-browed albatross
gray-headed albatross
light-mantled sooty albatross
southern giant petrel
Cape (pintado) petrel
snow petrel
soft-plumaged petrel
Antarctic prion
fairy prion
white-chinned petrel
Wilson's storm petrel
Georgian diving petrel
common diving petrel
king penguin
gentoo penguin
chinstrap penguin
South Georgia shag
snowy sheathbill
brown skua
kelp gull
Antarctic tern

Mammal Sightings:
South Georgia fur seal
elephant seal
reindeer (introduced)

Today's Reading: The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin

Explorer Ship's Log Entry

3:30 a.m. wake-up call for the trip ashore to watch the sunrise over Gold Harbour, billed as one of the great life experiences. In keeping with my policy that if it ain't a bird I ain't getting up for it, I elected to sleep in until 5:30 a.m. and go on the 6:00 a.m. Zodiac. Turns out it was too overcast for much of a sunrise, so it was just as well that I went later. Heck, it was still before breakfast.

Gold Harbour is a gorgeous beach just filled with penguins and fur seals and beauty! Two penguin chicks started following me around doing the food chase. I don't think they caught on to the fact that I'm not a penguin but they did finally get the idea that I wasn't their parent. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. What an extraordinary place. King penguins, elephant seals, light mantled sooty albatross ...

The mountains tower over the beach, with a huge tumbling glacier adding to the dramatic scene. The mountains and glacier dwarf the king penguins. The scenery even dwarfs the elephant seals, who are massive - they weigh multiple tons. Even with the overcast skies, everybody's cameras are just clicking away. I'm glad I slipped a couple of extra floppies in my pocket on my way out of my cabin.

King penguins are about 3 feet tall when they reach adulthood. Since I'm only just over 5 feet tall, I fit right in with them. I had a fellow Mavica-cultist take a picture of me among the penguins for the kids, who demanded a shot of AJ with penguins. The kings are more colorful than the other penguin species we've encountered so far, with their elegant highlights of yellow and orange and silvery gray. The chicks are covered with thick brown down. Early explorers dubbed them the "oakum boys" after some kind of brown hemp material used to stuff cracks on ships. It looks almost like wool. The chicks are definitely high on the cuteness scale. If I didn't know better, I'd want to hug them.

Strange penguin looks like a Dalmatian. Partially leucistic? Who knows? Brent calls it a Dalmatian.

As with every penguin colony we've visited so far, this place is teeming with skuas. It's teeming with everything, actually. Gold Harbour is an extraordinary place even without the "great life experience" of seeing the sun rise.

Elephant seals are huge. They dwarf king penguins. They dwarf me. They only thing they don't dwarf is the mountains. They come ashore this time of year to molt. Sometimes they gather in big steaming piles and sometimes they hang out alone on a lonely stretch of beach. Not that there's that much empty beach around with all these penguins and us large beings in red parkas.

Fur seals are everywhere in South Georgia. You can't get away from them. Funny how times change. Seals, both elephant and fur, taking over the island that was once the center of turning them into oil along with their whale cousins.

South Georgia was once home to several thriving whaling/sealing stations, most notably the one at Grytviken. When the market for the oil collapsed, Grytviken was abandoned. The rusting ships and rusting buildings are still there rusting away. A small museum tells the story of whaling , sealing, the local wildlife, Shackleton's voyage, and other history. Tim and Pauline Carr live aboard their yacht Curlew, tied up next to the rusting seal catcher Petrel, and maintain the museum.

After our early morning outing to Gold Harbour, we rested up on the way to landing at Grytviken in the afternoon. The Zodiacs brought us ashore at the cemetery where Shackleton is buried. He died of a heart attack on board the Quest on a later expedition and his wife requested that he be buried in South Georgia. So at the cemetery, Bob Burton said a few words, and as is traditional, we drank a toast "to The Boss". It was surprisingly moving.

The beach and the lower reaches of the tussock grass around the cemetery were dotted with steaming piles of molting elephant seals. This morning's snow was still fresh on the grass even though the air temperature had warmed and the precipitation changed to rain. The rain and the steaming seals added a touch of unreality to our walk from the cemetery through the whaling station to the museum. All that rusting machinery, piles of huge rusty chains big enough to haul the largest mammal ever caught (and killed) - a blue whale, the empty tanks... I could easily have spent an entire afternoon just photographing rusty wrecked things, if only I'd brought 400 film - and didn't have to be back on board for the trip to Jason Harbour. The place was eerie. A strange kind of ghost town where even the ghosts of its former inhabitants have gone somewhere else leaving only the ghosts of the whales and seals.

Another high point, in a day that was all high points, was the opportunity to get a close look at some of the confusing petrels and prions up close and personal, birds in hand. A white-chinned petrel, common diving petrel, Magellenic diving petrel, and a fairy prion had bumped into the ship during the night. A little stunned but not injured, they let Chris show off their field marks for us.

White-chinned petrel in hand

Fairy prion in hand

Jason Harbour, only 10 nautical miles from Grytviken, proved rich in birds too and provided us with excellent views of a herd of reindeer grazing. The reindeer were introduced by the Norwegians for meat back when Grytviken was a thriving settlement. It seemed weird to see an animal so thoroughly associated with the north way down here.

The Carrs and some other guests from South Georgia joined us for dinner, and then Tim and Pauline presented a wonderful slide show of their sails around South Georgia and environs. Boy do they have some amazing photos, not to mention amazing experiences! Pauline's story of being preened by a wandering albatross made me very envious.

I feel like I've crammed a week in South Georgia into one day! And we still have Prion Island tomorrow, where we will be able to see the wandering albatross on the nest. I'm so excited I hope I can sleep!