Journal - December 1

I passed on the opportunity to go ashore at 4 AM, in the face of 100 meters visibility, very dim light and hard drizzle, and went instead after breakfast in 200 meters visibility, dim light and hard drizzle. Didn't bother with the big lens or tripod, and in the rain hardly took the E-30 out of the bag.

Still, the main memory of St. Andrews is great piles of sub-adult Elephant Seals, steaming in the erratic weather, grunting, farting, moaning and roaring at each other, to the accompaniment of the broken accordion calls of tens of thousands of King Penguins. The river draining the easterly glacier was too high to permit anyone to reach the main colony, but where there weren't Elephant Seals there were King Penguins, entering the Bay, leaving the Bay or just hanging out. Up our side of the river were vast numbers of moulting King Penguins. A moulting King Penguin is not an attractive bird. There were shoals of penguin feathers in the lower pockets of the old river channels. The largest King Penguin colony in the world.

Now we begin the 2.5 day run to Elephant Island, across the Scotia Sea.

St. Andrews Bay in Hard Drizzle

King Penguin Portrait

Cape Disappointment,
South Georgia Island

Birds:
King Penguin
Antarctic Tern
Brown Skua
Southern Giant Petrel
Sheathbill
Kelp Gull
Black-browed Albatross
Light-mantled Sooty Albatross
Wandering Albatross
Snow Petrel
Cape Petrel
Antarctic Prion
South Georgia Shag
Wilson's Storm-Petrel

Mammals:
Southern Sea Lion
Elephant Seal

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