Penguins, seals and a lost notebook
Day 14- 20th January, written by Alessia (with edits by Sonja)
The day started with an early morning shift at 7am. Despite our efforts we had a pretty eventless morning, especially for mammal sightings., until we approached Yankee Harbour on Greenwich Island, our next landing site. Suddenly we started to spot more and more Gentoo penguins, swimming and porpoising beside the vessel. Then a minke whale appeared, the first in days, alongside several humpback whales. On the shore we also spotted Weddell seals, and our first Antarctic fur seals and Southern elephant seals.
After lunch we had a bit of free time as other passenger groups visited the penguins first, and no more than 100 people are allowed ashore at any one time. When it was our turn to get into the zodiacs some of us were secretly worried: would this gentoo colony smell as much as the Adelie colony? Because, let’s be honest, as much as they are adorable, goofy, and interesting, the smell at penguin colonies was more pungent and, unfortunately, persistent than what we had imagined. Luckily for us, this colony was more dispersed and the wind blew in a different direction so we enjoyed our survey time. This gentoo colony was located further north than the one we had visited on Pleneau Island and had older and thus larger chicks. The chicks were approximately 5 weeks old and were too large for the adults to cover them for warmth or shelter. It was quite exciting to observe how a skua attempted to land between the penguins only to be pecked at fiercely by the adults and a few feisty chicks.
After our penguin observations we had some time to explore and we were lucky enough to spot an Antarctic fur seal and at least 4 elephant seals napping. Personally, I find the fur seals cuter with those long whiskers rather than the elephant seals, considering also that many of us didn’t spot the elephant seals right away as they resembled rocks. [The elephant seals were changing fur – a process known as catastrophic moult where they shed their hair and outer skin layer. The seals huddle together for warmth and shared misery during the weeks of this itchy, energy-consuming process while having to fast as they are not able to forage at sea.]
When we returned to the ship we had a bit of free time and also started transcribing our data from notebook to computer. One of our pairs for penguin data recordings couldn’t find their notebook with the behavioural data. Losing data was worrying enough but potentially this was even worse given that we didn’t know if we had lost it on shore. The Antarctic visitor protocol explicitly forbids leaving anything behind on shore or putting anything other than our rubber boots on the ground. So a bunch of worried students were searching up and down three decks asking the reception and the expedition team, re-checking our cabins hoping to find the missing notebook before our next meeting. At dinner those in the know were quite worried expecting to be told off by the teaching staff. However, it transpired that one of the students had given the notebook to one of our professors for safekeeping but then had completely forgotten about this. So the notebook had been there all along (safely tucked away in backpack), and it turned out quite an amusing accident. We ended our evening in the expedition lounge on deck 10 chatting for a few hours until we all went to bed, exited for the next day.
