Look! Killer Whales!!

Today began with a wake-up call at 7:00, with breakfast at 7:30. After breakfast, two staff from Port Lockroy visited the ship to give us some history of the site. It was established in 1944 during WWII when the British sent a group of men here to monitor any German activity (there was none) and to conduct various scientific experiments, primarily weather-related data gathering. The station was turned over to scientists exclusively in 1946 after the war, and remained active until 1962. After that, it was abandoned and fell into disrepair until the early 1990s I believe, when Britain surveyed all its Antarctica sites to determine what to do with them. By then, the Antartic Treaty was in effect and each nation was responsbile for cleaning up the sites they had established previously. For Britain, that meant closing some stations, removing everything completely and rendering the sites totally pristine again, but for others, including Port Lockroy, it meant refurbishing the station and turning it into a museum and gift shop. In addition, there has been a post office here since the station was established (I'm not sure about the years during which it was not in use), which gave us an opportunity to mail some more post cards. Here again, stamps were just $1 each to send a postcard anywhere in the world!

The "island" where Port Lockroy museum sits is named Goudier Island and it is incredibly small – essentially just the size of the small building and adjacent living quarters, plus two gentoo penguin colonies. In one of the colonies, the penguins live right next to the structures, so they are very used to having human activity nearby (though the typical rules about remaining 15 feet away apply at least theoretically). There is a second colony which is left undisturbed. Three times per year, the staff counts the penguins and notes the breeding success to determine if there are significant differences in the success of chicks in the two colonies; so far there's not much difference. If there were, they might have to rethink the access of people to the penguins.

The second landing site here was Jougla Point, on adjacent Wiencke Island. This is the place where Jacques Cousteau found a variety of whale bones and essentially reconstructed a whale skeleton. They say it's probably a blue whale, and Kate, one of our naturalists on board, thinks it's either a blue or a fin whale – in either case, it's one of the largest whales from here. She gave us some great information on the structure of the whale's jaw and baleen and how that all works.   

There were also nesting gentoo penguins and Antarctic shags (Cormorants) there as well. Some of the chicks are pretty large, so we are hoping that they all survive this first harsh winter. But Jougla Point, where we landed first, was probably the dirtiest, "muddiest" place we've been so far. In fact, it's amazing how little walking we've done on snow or ice on this trip – last night was one of the few times, but mostly we are walking on rocks and guano. Greg said it lent a whole new meaning to the phrase "Up Shit Creek without a paddle." Boot washes (at Jougla Point, the boot wash was the ocean!) have become very important, especially since you keep your boots in your room!

We returned to the ship for lunch and an expedition afternoon – meaning we had no idea what was planned next. We headed back north through the Peltier Channel and the Neumeyer Channel, which are two more beautiful channels with the snow and glacier covered mountains lining both sides. It's beautiful again today, but the skies are cloudier, lending more of a mysterious air to the landscape versus yesterday's mostly clear skies. It just goes to show that you can be in the same or very similar place repeatedly and keep seeing different things.

After a while, we went to the room to relax a bit, and then heard that there was a pod of orcas off the ship. We raced to the 6^th deck and saw tons of them – we heard estimates of 45-50 whales nearby. They were just a few hundred yards off the ship at first, but then several were literally right next to it – at one point we saw two adults and one calf literally right next to the ship. We could see them underwater which made it easy to see when they were coming up to breathe. It was simply fantastic!!

We then anchored off of Useful Island – but we really have no idea where we are at right now, not that it matters. They started landing groups of 10 around 5:25pm, and the last zodiac was going to be at 7pm for dinner at 7:30. But then we learned that the chinstrap colony was on the top of the hill and we wouldn't have time to go up there, so we'd only be seeing the gentoos, and we've already seen several gentoo colonies, including those at Port Lockroy today. So we considered not going, and some people bailed then. We waited in line another 15 minutes or so, and then Gail Cheeseman said they had decided to scrap the landing. The wind on the landing side of the island had really picked up, and it was windier on the gangway. We hung around for a few minutes but then concluded that with the bad weather, we didn't want to zodiac cruise, even if it was available. We saw a zodiac loaded with people coming back and zipping around between the icebergs off the ship, but it didn't look that interesting, and zodiac cruising can be cold if it's windy. So in the end, we decided to scratch the landing and we returned to our room and changed into jeans for the rest of the evening.

We don't really know what the plan is for tomorrow, but likely we will make a second attempt at zodiac cruising in Cierva Cove, where the whales and seals are often quite abundant. But who knows? And as evidenced by the giant pod of orca whales today, sometimes the best days are the ones not planned at all.