Day 16 – Sights of South America
Saturday, 17 January 2026 – written by Hayden
Today was our last day at sea! Time has flown by so fast, and it’s hard to believe we’re almost done with our expedition. So much has happened in the weeks we’ve been on the ship, and yet it feels just like yesterday we embarked on our journey. We had an early start to our morning with some surveying in the Drake Passage, which continued to stay relatively calm with not much swell, although the winds were fierce at times. We were hoping to see a lot of species that have evaded us in earlier days of the trip, and fortunately, we definitely saw animals that we had been waiting for!
When doing our first survey shift of the day, we happened to see groups of albatrosses, and spotted our first southern royal albatross of the trip! Seeing it next to the smaller black-browed albatrosses revealed its enormous size to us – the species has an average wingspan of over 3 meters!
As we approached the Beagle Channel, we even observed a species that we had been waiting to see the whole time, the wandering albatross (snowy albatross)! This species, although far off in the distance, also was able to be spotted because of its size. It happens to have the largest wingspan of any flying seabird today, exceeding 3.5 meters. Simultaneously, we began to have our first sightings of land – it was so strange to see green land and trees after all this time with snow and ice!
We also saw some amazing dolphins – both dusky dolphins and Peale’s dolphins! We got to observe them riding the bow of our ship, which led to some interesting maneuvers to catch a glimpse of them. This was very exciting, but we can’t forget the other sighting as we traversed the Beagle Channel. We spotted Magellanic penguins, which we had also seen on our first day when leaving Ushuaia! It all came full circle.
As we approached the end of our trip, we also attended a beautiful presentation by the ship’s photographer and a farewell from the ship’s captain and crew! However, our work did not stop there. We continued to review and discuss our data and how it would be used once we returned to St Andrews.
We ended up arriving in Ushuaia in the evening, much earlier than expected, so we were able to have more time to explore the city! Most of us headed into town and somehow congregated in an Irish pub.
Tomorrow will be a busy travel day for many of us, so spending some time relaxing and enjoying the beautiful scenery here in Ushuaia was a lovely end to our time on this expedition.