Deception Island
What a beautiful day, sunny, just a breath of breeze with endless horizons of sea and snow-capped mountains, made all the more mysterious and exotic by patches of puffy white fog! We made a pre-breakfast landing at Baily Head on Deception Island to visit a huge chinstrap penguin colony. From the beach we could see a highway of comings and goings from the interior to the ocean and back. It was like a surrealistic play, hundreds and hundreds of very serious looking creatures with a somewhat incomprehensible but important purpose were marching back and forth, incoming penguins on the right, and outgoing penguins on the left. They seemed so dignified, but they had such short legs and their dignity quickly sublimated to comedy, no, you couldn’t help but love them. An easy climb over a ridge, hey, hey, being careful not to startle, and it was indeed another world. There was a vast bowl, in it and above it were thousands and thousands of penguins, a world of its own, independent of ours. Something wonderful, it was there whether we were or not, whether we will be or not.
After breakfast we cruised through the narrow entrance to the interior of the island. Aground? No indeed! We cruised through Neptune’s Bellows into a caldera, a collapsed volcano, simply amazing, with steam rising along the beach where you can swim, wallow really, naked if you want, here in Antarctica where the year around water temperature is usually a constant degree or two below freezing, and that is just what some people did. But not me, it was time to go to work, to explore the underwater world. With me today was Lisa Trotter, the Assistant Expedition Leader, my favorite dive buddy and one of the only people in the world who first learned how to dive in Antarctica, yes, first learned to dive, you know, open water, certification and all that, and what a bit of luck it was for me to have her with me today! The plan was to go back to Baily Head where there are some very nice underwater pinnacles with lots of life for us video and share with everyone. But as we passed through Neptune’s Bellow our surface support man and driver Earl noticed the blows of two humpback whales about a mile ahead. I called our Captain, Karl Lampe and asked him if it would be okay to check it out and in the spirit of exploration he said, “Go for it!” well maybe he did say something more official and seaman-like, but it meant the same thing to me.
Within a few minutes we were along side the whales. They were cruising, diving and feeding on krill, that is judging from the red residue they were leaving on the surface. We cruised along with them for a while, trying to make their acquaintance. It’s rather rude to just zoom in and usually they will let you know that you’re unwelcome if you do. No, you need to put in some time, like a first date, make an effort and when the moment comes they come to you and they did. But how to get photos? I tried dunking the underwater camera into the water from the Zodiac but it just was not any good. What could I do? What did I have to make this all work? What did I have that the whales would want. Yes, that’s it, I threw Lisa in and gave her the camera and in the photo you see just a tiny bit of her work… but you really need to see the video. And oh yes, it was really hard for me to get her out of the water again. Look at the picture, it’s natural light, they use those 15-foot white fins to startle and herd fish and krill. Look at the glow, I’ll bet they’re very effective. And so goes another day in Antarctica. After the ship left Deception Island we did indeed encounter more humpback whales, whales that everyone could enjoyed firsthand and better appreciate the undersea experience.
What a beautiful day, sunny, just a breath of breeze with endless horizons of sea and snow-capped mountains, made all the more mysterious and exotic by patches of puffy white fog! We made a pre-breakfast landing at Baily Head on Deception Island to visit a huge chinstrap penguin colony. From the beach we could see a highway of comings and goings from the interior to the ocean and back. It was like a surrealistic play, hundreds and hundreds of very serious looking creatures with a somewhat incomprehensible but important purpose were marching back and forth, incoming penguins on the right, and outgoing penguins on the left. They seemed so dignified, but they had such short legs and their dignity quickly sublimated to comedy, no, you couldn’t help but love them. An easy climb over a ridge, hey, hey, being careful not to startle, and it was indeed another world. There was a vast bowl, in it and above it were thousands and thousands of penguins, a world of its own, independent of ours. Something wonderful, it was there whether we were or not, whether we will be or not.
After breakfast we cruised through the narrow entrance to the interior of the island. Aground? No indeed! We cruised through Neptune’s Bellows into a caldera, a collapsed volcano, simply amazing, with steam rising along the beach where you can swim, wallow really, naked if you want, here in Antarctica where the year around water temperature is usually a constant degree or two below freezing, and that is just what some people did. But not me, it was time to go to work, to explore the underwater world. With me today was Lisa Trotter, the Assistant Expedition Leader, my favorite dive buddy and one of the only people in the world who first learned how to dive in Antarctica, yes, first learned to dive, you know, open water, certification and all that, and what a bit of luck it was for me to have her with me today! The plan was to go back to Baily Head where there are some very nice underwater pinnacles with lots of life for us video and share with everyone. But as we passed through Neptune’s Bellow our surface support man and driver Earl noticed the blows of two humpback whales about a mile ahead. I called our Captain, Karl Lampe and asked him if it would be okay to check it out and in the spirit of exploration he said, “Go for it!” well maybe he did say something more official and seaman-like, but it meant the same thing to me.
Within a few minutes we were along side the whales. They were cruising, diving and feeding on krill, that is judging from the red residue they were leaving on the surface. We cruised along with them for a while, trying to make their acquaintance. It’s rather rude to just zoom in and usually they will let you know that you’re unwelcome if you do. No, you need to put in some time, like a first date, make an effort and when the moment comes they come to you and they did. But how to get photos? I tried dunking the underwater camera into the water from the Zodiac but it just was not any good. What could I do? What did I have to make this all work? What did I have that the whales would want. Yes, that’s it, I threw Lisa in and gave her the camera and in the photo you see just a tiny bit of her work… but you really need to see the video. And oh yes, it was really hard for me to get her out of the water again. Look at the picture, it’s natural light, they use those 15-foot white fins to startle and herd fish and krill. Look at the glow, I’ll bet they’re very effective. And so goes another day in Antarctica. After the ship left Deception Island we did indeed encounter more humpback whales, whales that everyone could enjoyed firsthand and better appreciate the undersea experience.
