20th – Ave, Imperator!

As planned the alarm went off at 0330 and there was quite a few of us out and about to see the sunrise and tabular icebergs now slowly appearing when entering the Antarctic Sound. After an hour or so my interest in sleep overruled my fear of missing out of something interesting and I returned to my cabin.

At 0700 we had our usual wakeup call; time, date, weather and forecast, location and destination. And as a minor afterthought it was mentioned that an emperor penguin had been spotted. They usually only appear much further south and are a rarity this far north. Our expedition leader has been here 15-ish times and with this he had seen a total of 2. I was out of bed, dressed and with camera in hand faster than I ever thought possible but when coming up on deck it seemed to have dived and disappeared. It annoys me more than it should that it got away before I got a shot of it – or even just saw it! – but to be honest hearing a rumor that somebody had managed to get a shot of it before it disappeared bugged me even more. Jealousy is not a nice thing.

After standing around for a bit I went back down to have a shower and breakfast. Due to the amounts of ice present we were not able to get further south so instead we grabbed the zodiacs and started cruising around among the ice. We got to see some adélie penguins for the first time and in groups of 2-3 zodiacs we anchored on a large piece of sea ice where we got the opportunity have a walk around. To be honest during the entire time I was sneaking an ear to the radios hoping the word “emperor” would come over it, but that unfortunately never happened. We had a bit more cruising done before the ship asked us to return. When getting into the zodiacs the conditions weren’t quite as calm as what we were used to and the swell had now increased quite a bit and the wind had picked up, too. It was announced that the winds had gone up to 35-40 knots with gusts above 50 knots and we were asked not to go out on the top deck because of this.

Antarctic tern.

Adélie penguin.

After everyone had returned to the ship we continued towards Gourdin Island. The views of icebergs on the way were amazing, some of the 1-2 km long, dwarfing the ship even at a distance. It was quite humbling to experience. We arrived at mid-afternoon and anchored as usual. The weather had calmed a bit but the zodiacs we still bobbing a meter up and down at the gangway and there was quite a bit of spray going on when getting us to land. The island had a lot of adélie colonies which we now got the chance to see up close. They don’t seem to not be quite as shy or territorial as the gentoos and chinstraps but they were obviously still wild animals you should keep your distance to. From a view point you could see out over the surrounding sea and several tabular icebergs.

It can be hard to see the size without any references but this photo was taken from the ship, not a zodiac.

Only photo I have with 3 different kinds of penguins; gentoos in the front, adélies to the right and chinstraps in the back.

Back at the ship dinner was had and afterwards we were shown the documentary “Chasing Ice” about the receding glaciers around the world. Very shocking, highly recommended.