This morning whale biologist Roger Payne serenaded us with humpback songs as we were gently rocked by the ocean swells. As expedition leader Matt Drennan read from "The Worst Journey in the World," ice-clad peaks pierced the South Atlantic Ocean. We had arrived at the South Orkney Islands. These island were first discovered in 1821 by the American sealer Nathaniel B. Palmer, but were claimed for England and renamed by James Weddell in 1822. They were called the South Orkneys because they lie at nearly the same latitude as the Orkney Islands in Scotland in the Northern Hemisphere.
After lunch we visited Gibbon Bay on Coronation Island, home to thousands of chinstrap penguins and many nesting Cape petrels. Immense tabular icebergs littered the bay, providing safe havens for many young penguins. These food-rich waters had attracted large flocks of Cape petrels, shown in today's photo, which often surrounded our Zodiacs or took flight in a haze of brown and white. Enveloped in the beauty of Antarctica's most northerly islands we enjoyed our final exploration of the Great White Continent. As the night sky fell we headed northward for our next adventure, South Georgia.
