Saturday, March 9, 2019 – The seas were heavy last night, but rhythmic and soothing, so sleep was restful and long. Woke up to another glorious sunrise, had breakfast and then wandered around on the outside decks as we cruised along toward the Fish Islands. Along the way, the ship slowed, and an announcement came on regarding a pod of humpbacks surrounding the ship. The captain skillfully guided the ship in tight circles so everyone on board got a chance to see many, many whales. I’m guessing there were at least 50 and maybe even more! Fortunately, I live in an area where humpbacks are common some parts of the year, so I got a couple of pics, but mostly was able to just sit back and enjoy the show. I don’t have a long enough lens to get much of interest anyway. Sometimes its just really nice not to have to jockey for position to get a picture, and just experience the moment!
The Fish Islands are numerous, and most of them are apparently pretty small. The idea was to have a landing, but there was just too much sea ice and it was impacted against the potential landing areas, so we did zodiac cruising instead, which I enjoy just as much, and sometimes prefer.
The passengers are divided into four random groups for zodiac cruising – gentoo (penguin), leopard (seal), humpback (whale) and albatross (bird). I’m in the humpback group – now isn’t that just so appropriate. We signed up for the groups the first day or two. One group has the Mandarin-speaking passengers that aren’t proficient in English, so they have a guide/translator who is fluent in Mandarin. Another group has the same for the French speakers. The order in which we disembark is rotated between the two zodiac boarding areas. Its pretty organized, and everyone essentially gets the same amount of time on the water, or at the landing area.
Today was a little different in that they offered photography excursions via zodiac, where each boat had a professional photographer on board who talked about various approaches to taking photos in polar conditions. It was interesting, and most of the concepts apply to every day photography anywhere in the world. My guide was Kyle, who is funny and very dramatic! I got to know him on my trip to the Arctic last year, so we have had a good base to work from. He’s interesting to talk with, as he knows so much about photography, and is a whiz kid at Photoshop, mainly because he’s a commercial photographer and he’s been interested in photography since he was really young.
We cruised around among icebergs, big and small, and brash ice, which is explained in a previous post. The ice can easily clog the propeller of the outboard motor, so when that happens the driver puts it into reverse and guns the motor, which expels the ice and we can go forward again. Because of the amount of ice in the water, this procedure was done several times over the course of our ride. The ice formations are stunningly beautiful, with all shapes and size, and various shades of white, blue and clear (called black ice). Much of the sea ice is relatively flat and only a few inches to a couple feet above the surface of the water, so its easy for the seals and penguins to get out of the water onto the ice. We ran into several species of seals, including my first leopard seal. The fur, weddell and crabeater seals only feed on penguins opportunistically, if at all. Mostly they eat krill. The leopard seals, on the other hand, are at the top of the food chain along with the Orcas. They’ve even been known to attack zodiacs! Luckily, the zodiacs have several separate air compartments, so even if one is compromised, it will stay afloat. And, the guides are pretty good at predicting the mammal behaviors, so its not very likely it’ll happen on this trip!!
Similar to Red Rock Ridge, both Adelie penguins and Blue-eyed Antarctic Cormorants have colonies on the Fish Island, and we saw many of each of those as well.
Travels with Nance 