At Sea
This morning it is gray with a mild sea on this, our second day out of South Georgia Island en route to the Falkland Islands. We are out of the Southern Ocean and in to the Atlantic Ocean. It seems to make little difference to the seabirds, as there is an abundance of albatross and various petrels around the ship.
Yet, the water is very different today; it is not as white and it is warmer. For the creatures that live in the first few hundred feet below the surface of the ocean it is like the difference between temperate forest and tropical savanna; it is difficult to live in both. Most creatures adapt to only one.
Ahead of us is the more familiar destination—no, it is not Kansas, but it is a place that most of us could live in, the Falkland Islands. It is also a great wildlife destination: penguins, sea lions, dolphins, whales, and great flowers too. Yes, some of us could live in the lands of the Southern Ocean, but for the most part we would be dependent on technology. It is certainly not a place that our ancestors would have flourished on a year-round basis.
This is true for many of the creatures we have encountered so far on this voyage. They come to the Southern Ocean for the long days and a relative short period of abundant food. Here is a young South Georgia shag hoping that one of the divers is a lifetime supply of food! If the bird is lucky, diligent and perhaps with good genes, it will be as reported by the Rolling Stones—“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you might just find you get what you need.”
