Zodiac Cruise

Whilst landings are great, when the ship is in a good area for ice and wildlife, it can also be fun just to go out and cruise in the zodiacs for a bit.  It is fascinating to get up close to the ice in the water when the amazing blues show through, and there is always the chance of a few close encounters with birds, penguins, seals or even whales - though sadly we never found a whale ourselves.

Over lunch the ship repositioned to a location near to Gourdin Island. During this sailing we passed some spectacular and huge icebergs, though as ever, the photos don't really give you any perspective on their size.

In the afternoon, we started off with a zodiac trip around some of the ice and along the shore of the island, which we were to visit later.  There was a huge tabular iceberg that I would have liked to get close to, but it was too far away, so we made do with some of the smaller bergs nearby, in the more sheltered waters.

It was just as well that we didn't go too far out because whilst this didn't seem at all choppy to us compared to a couple of the trips we made for landings last time, there were a few waves crashing over us once we got speed up, and we did get a bit wet.

Some people found this icy drenching a bit much; but then that is why you wear all of your waterproof gear in the zodiac.  It can rather take your breath away though, especially when you get a good splash in the face.



We passed near to one berg that was like a big blue shard pointing up at the sky.  It looked fabulous; sadly my photo of it does not.


Talking of photos, the zodiac cruise was a great opportunity to try out the waterproof camera that we had bought specifically for this kind of thing.

Of course working any camera with gloves on isn't the easiest of things, and I spent quite a while wondering what on earth was going on with my photos before I realised that I had accidentally set the camera onto some kind of create-a-panorama-scene setting. Oops.

We watched for a while as three seabirds squabbled over sharing a jellyfish that one of them had caught, then set off for the coastline of the islands, where the water is an amazing blue colour around the base of the icebergs.


We saw a few crabeater and Weddell seals hauled out on the ice, but we we most excited by our first sightings of the chinstrap penguins.   No photos of these here as was having trouble with the camera at the time, but you will certainly see them in the next posting.

Whilst you wonder sometimes how some types of penguin, such as the gentoo and the adelie get their name, it is pretty obvious why these are called chinstrap. Their predominantly white face and the narrow black band under their chin make them very distinctive.

 Further around, the adelie penguins were in good spirits, darting about in the water, often heading towards the land and then deciding to play in the sea a bit longer. When the time came to get out, they had to swim for the shore line and then propel themselves about a metre and a half upwards to get onto the ledge of the land.

Most of the time this worked, and they would make it onto the land and slide along on their front until they could make it up on to their feet again. Quite often though, they didn't make it; they would hit the ledge near the top and fall back into the water.

Some of them would take three or four attempts to make it onto the land. It did look quite comical, although I suppose it must have been a bit painful for them as they hit the side. They all seemed OK though, so it can't have done them any real harm.

Our last zodiac cruise in Antarctica

On our last day, we had planned to make a stop at another bay, but it was too windy to launch the zodiacs there, so we sailed on further.  En route, we passed through yet more great scenery, spotted a few more humpbacks, and got another tail fin shot.

Of course with my little camera it is little more than a speck in the distance, but it is still a tail.

The area that we stopped at is completely protected.  Noone other than scientists is permitted to make any landings on any part of the shore, so we just did another zodiac cruise around the bay.

The ice was fabulous.  We passed some huge bergs on the way here and there were some reasonably big ones floating in the bay.  I have included one picture that shows our ship (the smaller looking one because it is further away) and another ship near to one of the medium sized icebergs to give you some idea of the scale.

With the wind up as it was, even in the relatively calm waters here there were a couple of the smaller icebergs that were rocking in the waves and close to flipping over.

It would have been good to see one actually turn, but none did while we were there.  Probably best not to be too close anyway, as I guess they make quite a wave of their own when they do go over.

Some of the bergs had some amazing shapes and colours.  There was one that looked almost completely smooth, while another looked like someone had taken a huge knife and sliced through it repeatedly, but just leaving enough to hold it all together.  Most were a pristine looking pale powdery blue, perhaps with some veins of deep sapphire running through them, but a few were different.

One in particular was a deeper, more transparent blue with brown areas that looked like it had rolled in the dirt.  It also had a totally clear section that pointed out like a finger from one end.  Another small berg was like a curled leaf, complete with an etched pattern of veins.

One of my favourites here were a set of three, or possibly a single one with gaps, where one piece stood quite tall and looked very moody against the cloudy sky.  It had a small round hole in it which we found fascinating too.

Another was one with a really deep blue base but got lighter at the top, that seemed to have hollow funnels all through it.  It just looked stunning.

As fascinating as the ice was though, we were all pleased to spot a few more leopard seals.  The first was swimming around the ice and took little notice of us watching it.

The second was a young one, laid out on a piece of ice and was quite relaxed as we approached.

He looked at us occasionally, just to check that we weren't going to give him a problem, but appeared totally at ease with us there.

He was certainly relaxed enough to relieve himself while we watched.  And a very, very long wee it was too; we were quite surprised he didn't sink his bit of ice.

He did let us get very close indeed and it was great to be able to see his beautiful spotty markings so clearly.  He appears to have a different coloured underside, but that is just from where he had been lying on the ice.

When we moved around to the back of him, we saw that he had been fitted with a transmitter and a little blue toe tag, so he is being monitored by some scientist somewhere.  The transmitter didn't seem to bother him at all and it will fall off naturally when he moults.

Arriving back on the ship, we were greeted with a hot chocolate with rum in.  Just what we needed to round off our Antarctic cruising and warm up again for the evening sail back to the Drake Passage.

Zodiac cruise in Paradise Harbour

Over lunch we sailed back to Paradise Harbour and this time as we sailed into it we got a better opportunity to enjoy the scenery.  Large swathes of brash ice covered the surface of the water with bergy bits providing convenient platforms for the odd seal or penguin.


We were also lucky enough to spot couple of humpback whales, mother and calf.  Even to a novice whale spotter like me, you could tell the distinctive arched motion as they move, and we all waited in hope of seeing the tail coming up.

Humpback whale tailfin

We weren't disappointed as they both dived a couple of times giving us a great view of the black and white underside of their tail fins.  I was pleased that  I just about managed to get a shot of it.
In the afternoon, Nic and I took the zodiac cruise. The general plan for the zodiac cruise is to have a chance to get up closer to the ice, and have a hunt around for any wildlife that might be nearby.
Because the captain keeps a reasonable distance between the ship and any icebergs, not surprising given the reminder of the upcoming 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, it is easy to be fooled into thinking that they are smaller than they really are.

It is so hard to appreciate the sheer scale of the ocean and islands, let alone the continent itself, and if you can't grasp just how enormous they are, then you can't possibly realise how big the icebergs are.  Getting up close to even the little ones, and seeing that they are not little at all, helps you to get a better perspective.

And it is fascinating to look at the different forms that the ice takes. In particular you can see the ones where the ice has turned over, so that the section that was below the water is now on top.

This is when you get to see the fabulous dimpled effect on the ice, or can see the steppes that the water creates.  There is more that I could say about the different types, colours and textures of the ice, but as we are now going to the Weddell Sea at the end of the year I'll save it until then.

Much of the water surface in Paradise Harbour is covered in brash ice. The ship ploughs through this easily, but it is a different story in a zodiac.  The drivers are all practiced at getting through, but you can see they need to pick the path of least resistance, and even then they get stuck every so often.

Blue eyed shag

Generally this is because the motor has got blocked by the ice, and they have to work it free, but sometimes they just reach thicker ice that they can't pass through, so have to back up and go around it.  But despite a few problems we got about pretty well.
We passed the Argentine Brown station, where the original buildings were destroyed in April 1984 when the station leader started a fire because he didn't want to stay here for another winter.  The people were rescued by a US ship. I assume he had timed the fire for when he knew a shop was scheduled to be nearby, as being left out and exposed once the fire had burned out would almost certainly be deadly.

Crabeater Seal

Our first wildlife was the small nesting site of blue eyed shags (keep the smutty comments to yourselves please, we've already done them all!). Their home is a steep multi coloured rock face.

Like the snow, the rock can be turned different colours by various natural elements.  They can be blue-green from copper deposits, emerald green from mosses, or orange and yellow from lichens.

Leopard Seal

As we were watching the birds, we spotted a couple of crabeater seals.  Crabeaters are apparently the most abundant type of seal, but despite their name they don't eat crabs at all, they eat krill.  They weren't overly keen on hanging out with us so we watched them for a short while but then left them alone and carried on around the bay.

We soon spotted a leopard seal on some ice and got up fairly close to it.  It kept an eye on us but didn't seem bothered by us at all.  In fact it was so unimpressed that it proceeded to do an incredibly long and very bright red poo.  The bright red was from the krill that it eats.  I can only assume that the huge amount of poo meant that a lot of krill had died to satisfy his appetite.

Hearing from another zodiac that a second leopard seal was lounging about on a different bit of ice, we went to check that out.  This one didn't stay on the ice for long and for a moment we thought we'd driven it away, but we needn't have worried.  It was taking an interest in us, and was swimming nearby to the zodiac, circling around us and popping up regularly.
After  a while, a second zodiac turned up, but that didn't bother it either. It just kept on swimming even closer around us, between the zodiacs and underneath them.  We had already been told that it is not unknown for the leopard seals to take a bit at a zodiac, so our drivers were keeping a watchful eye to see if the seal turned aggressive and we needed to leave.  Happily though, the seal showed no sign of attacking, and just kept swimming around right next to us.

We watched him for a while, and then figured it was time for us to head back.  The idea was to leave the second zodiac alone with it.  However the leopard seal had other ideas and followed us.  It carried on swimming after us for a while, but eventually gave up and went elsewhere.  One theory about it following is that it likes the bubbles in the water created by the motor, but we preferred to think that it just taken a liking to us.