Gerlache Strait
You can’t fault expedition leader Tom Ritchie for not providing a full day’s worth of landings. That’s just fine for the Endeavour’s guest researchers from the Antarctic Site Inventory, who need to maximize their shore time in order to collect as much data as possible during the brief Antarctic field season. Our day began with a visit to Hydrurga Rocks, named after the leopard seal, Hydrurga leptonyx. While we failed to catch sight of the sinuous form of this consummate predator, there were plenty of Weddell seals snoozing on the floes, singing diving songs as they dream of deep water, their pinging and humming adding to the quiet calls of some 400 nesting pairs of chinstrap penguins that call this small island home. Three hundred and ninety eight, to be exact, thanks to a count provided by the ASI, along with twelve nesting pairs of blue-eyed shags, at least one nest of the dove-like sheathbill, three nests of the kelp gull, and one nest of the Brown skua. The Inventory, in its 10th season, develops this information to make retrospective comparisons and analyses, which help detect changes in Peninsula fauna and flora populations. The results of these comparisons and analyses spur efforts to minimize and avoid any direct, immediate, or long-term impacts from human activities. And Lindblad supplies the platform for this work to take place.
By afternoon we were cruising in the Gerlache Strait, and while the ASI does not track them, it was still pure joy to spend over two hours with four humpback whales as the ship’s officers carefully maneuvered the Endeavour just out of range. The undersea specialists deployed plankton nets and cameras to take a better look at the large mass of krill that motivated these boxcar-sized creatures to behave like big dogs on a lawn, rolling on their backs and bashing each other with flukes. So it wasn’t until after dinner that we made our last visit of the day to Neko Harbor. It was no problem to tally up the 1,042 nesting pairs of gentoo penguins scattered over this rocky knob at the foot of a constantly calving glacier in Andvord Bay in the evening light. But how does one count the low crooning of the gentoos over the calm waters of the small bay or the blue light of glacier? We’ll have to invent new science, quantify passion, before we can take the full measure of this place, Antarctica.
You can’t fault expedition leader Tom Ritchie for not providing a full day’s worth of landings. That’s just fine for the Endeavour’s guest researchers from the Antarctic Site Inventory, who need to maximize their shore time in order to collect as much data as possible during the brief Antarctic field season. Our day began with a visit to Hydrurga Rocks, named after the leopard seal, Hydrurga leptonyx. While we failed to catch sight of the sinuous form of this consummate predator, there were plenty of Weddell seals snoozing on the floes, singing diving songs as they dream of deep water, their pinging and humming adding to the quiet calls of some 400 nesting pairs of chinstrap penguins that call this small island home. Three hundred and ninety eight, to be exact, thanks to a count provided by the ASI, along with twelve nesting pairs of blue-eyed shags, at least one nest of the dove-like sheathbill, three nests of the kelp gull, and one nest of the Brown skua. The Inventory, in its 10th season, develops this information to make retrospective comparisons and analyses, which help detect changes in Peninsula fauna and flora populations. The results of these comparisons and analyses spur efforts to minimize and avoid any direct, immediate, or long-term impacts from human activities. And Lindblad supplies the platform for this work to take place.
By afternoon we were cruising in the Gerlache Strait, and while the ASI does not track them, it was still pure joy to spend over two hours with four humpback whales as the ship’s officers carefully maneuvered the Endeavour just out of range. The undersea specialists deployed plankton nets and cameras to take a better look at the large mass of krill that motivated these boxcar-sized creatures to behave like big dogs on a lawn, rolling on their backs and bashing each other with flukes. So it wasn’t until after dinner that we made our last visit of the day to Neko Harbor. It was no problem to tally up the 1,042 nesting pairs of gentoo penguins scattered over this rocky knob at the foot of a constantly calving glacier in Andvord Bay in the evening light. But how does one count the low crooning of the gentoos over the calm waters of the small bay or the blue light of glacier? We’ll have to invent new science, quantify passion, before we can take the full measure of this place, Antarctica.
