Day 13 - 19/Jan/24 - Antarctica - Day 3
It was yet another early day on the Oosterdam when the Expedition leader began his commentary on the outer decks at 7am. We're on deck 4, so we can hear the noise but can't make out the words. But it does make an effective wake up alarm clock. So we turned on the TV and started listening to the commentary before getting up for the day. Today actually turned out to have a real trifecta of items related to our Expedition. Sandwiched in between was the sweet filling of other events.
The first part of the trifecta was a gentle float in Charlotte Bay. The water was totally still and the steep and sharp ice covered cliffs ringed the bay. And the still waters reflected the grandeur of those same cliffs. As we left the bay I ate a solo breakfast of Congi (a rice based breakfast soup). We enjoyed our first lecture of the day by Dr. Ed Baker on Technology and Challenges of Antarctic Science. It was good. We then walked the deck and began to see humpback whales. At around 11:20am we encountered a large pod of them "bubble" feeding. Bubble feeding is when the whales as a pack, dive down and release air bubbles while swimming in a circle as they rise to the surface. This causes the little fish to school up and rise to the surface and a feeding frenzy then occurs. All the while the whales continue in a circle, splashing, and eating, and it's a fabulous sight to see. That was the second part of the trifecta. We've never seen bubble feeding in Antarctica (we've seen it in Alaska near Juneau), and it was spectacular.
After a light lunch of fish stew, attended Adrian Corvino's lecture on Bugs, Sols, and Rocks which documented his experience on an Antarctic team seeking samples of very small bugs that lived on the continent. It was a good presentation. We then found a quiet spot at the deck 3 atrium lounge on the port side The Pinnacle Grill was our dinner venue for tonight and we had a nice window seat and enjoyed it very much as we cruised toward Deception Island which would be the third part of the trifecta.
As we approached Deception Island, a pack of Killer Whales (Orcas) was observed. These are the first that I've seen on this voyage and I got a few photos. They pretty much did not break the plane of the of water's surface, but I saw lots of dorsal fins. Up to this point the cloud level was pretty low, but it raised at Deception Island so we had a terrific view into the caldera of this active volcano. On the left side of the entrance to the caldera was a large chinstrap penguin rookery and it was surprising how far up the hillside those penguins would march. The Captain did a 360º counter clockwise turn and we headed towards the "real" rookery which is home to over 200,000 chinstrap penguins. Before we reached it, I could smell it, and there were definitely lots of penguins there. Even more surprising, we could hear them and also I noted that many of them hiked all the way to the top of the mountain which is probably some 2,000 feet in elevation. It was impressive! Also there was a small iceberg that had many penguins on it, and they were quite photogenic.
After enjoying the penguins, we attended Buddy Fitzpatrick's 9pm show in which he credited the penguins for being his opening act as the MainStage was very full which is quite unusual for a 9pm performance. He truly knew the penguins were the main attraction but he was still very funny with the same core jokes as we heard last voyage. Afterwards, we retired to the room as we have one final early day to visit Elephant Island and the memorial to Captain Pardot and his rescue of the Shackleton crew plus there is another large penguin colony there. I hope we can get closer than we got the last voyage so that I can get sharper pictures.
It was an action packed and wonderful day. But morning comes early.
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