Booth Island and the Lemaire Channel
Life seldom presents itself as black and white. As one knows when making choices nothing is black and white for options always exist and the answer is frequently gray. But today Antarctica was begging our eyes to see the colors of black and white.
Heavy, wet snow fell in gigantic flakes rapidly enveloping our world. Thick carpets accumulated on the decks and ladders. Only a boot print betrayed a human presence outside our cozy warm observation post. No music accompanied the “dance of the worker bees” that introduced vibrant colors to the scene. Bedecked in bright yellow jackets and florescent orange gloves, able bodied seamen seemed to move in choreographed harmony clearing slippery hazards from our routes.
As if pre-arranged, as we approached Cape Renard at the northern end of the Lemaire Channel, the precipitation halted and slowly the mountains of the Antarctic Peninsula and Booth Island were revealed. Our cameras wished to recognize the shades of blue that bounce about at this latitude turning the waters pewter and painting the clouds steely gray. But something about the quality of the light encouraged us to remove the brilliant shades and capture it in black and white.
Waves washed the green shimmering toe of an iceberg and curled back in tones of peacock blue as we turned our attention to an emperor penguin standing there. Alone but not lonely, this chick of the year preened and plucked at downy tufts still stubbornly clinging to its new waterproof plumage counter-shaded in black and white.
Bright red coats followed one behind another across the waist of Booth Island to peer down into Port Charcot. Diverging paths led either to penguin colonies where all three brush-tailed species dwelt side-by-side or to historical sites left behind by that intrepid explorer, Jean Baptiste Charcot. One hundred years after his visit to these shores a carefully constructed cairn looms above it all, its rocky prominence an inviting perch from which to survey the activities below. The sun glistened on our vessel far below, its golden stripe reflected in the mirror sea which seemed to spawn kayaks of matching yellow-gold. Clouds swarmed about the snow capped mountains on Anvers Island to the north like a veil dancer gracefully whirling, hiding her face one moment or granting us a glimpse in the next. They too cried out to be seen in black and white.
Even the National Geographic Explorer looked miniscule when anchored in a bay surrounded by cascading glaciers and sharp angled mountain peaks. Our Zodiacs became tiny specks and we ourselves an insignificant part of the scene as we explored the edges of the Lemaire. Red snow algae bloomed downwind from gentoo colonies high above. Trails, painted rusty red by myriads of dirty penguin feet drew patterns from shore to rocky ridge, a contrast to the grooves in avalanche chutes. Crabeater seals lounged on ice floes drifting here and there with the currents.
We do not drift but now head south bound for new adventures. One wonders what the colors of tomorrow will be.
