Port Lockroy & Dallman Bay
The winds off Weinke Island brought an early hint of the bluster that was to mark most of the day, our last in Antarctica. We began the morning anchored in Port Lockroy, home to the former British Base A, now managed as an historical site by the British Antarctic Heritage Trust, complete with Union Jack and red post office box.
The Trust this year has hired its first all-female team, who will stamp postcards, sell fleece tops, and count the occasional penguin until they close the site in March. Since they come aboard to our ship to give presentations, and are rewarded by the frequent offers of hot showers and a meal, it’s a bit removed from the days when the boys at Base A were left on their own for the sometimes two-year deployments, marked by only the occasional radio call and listening to the hand-cranked phonograph to songs that probably became all-too familiar.
Following our visit to the base and a tour of whalebones bleaching in the daylight of nearby Jougla Point, our own expedition galley managed an impromptu party of its own, cooking hotdogs and offering cold beer on the afterdeck.
Dallman Bay was our afternoon destination and the final one in Antarctica on this voyage. The hoped for main attraction was whale watching. We were not disappointed! A pod of perhaps as many as a dozen Orca, the killer whale, were spotted ahead of the ship. The group, composed of a large male, two smaller males, several females and one calf, turned toward the ship and swam under and alongside the bow, to the cheers of admiring guests. This, coincidentally, reminds us that the Port Lockroy group is not the only female-led team in the Peninsula.Orca pods in the Antarctic, as elsewhere, are matrilineal, and led by an experienced female, one that may be past reproductive age, but nonetheless leads and is supported by other members of the pod by dint of her wisdom and experience.
It was also a good day for our National Geographic and Lindblad-supported Oceanites research team to wrap up its work for this trip…we managed the day before to do site-wide nest counts at Petermann Island, my home for five Antarctic seasons. The trends of declining Adelie penguin populations and rising gentoo penguin populations continues, leading us to ponder the effects of the climate that is changing here on the Peninsula faster than anywhere on the planet.
Next trip, more counts, at more places, as National Geographic Explorer returns with a fresh team of researchers.
