Our day started on the bridge with a burst of sunlight over the mountains of the peninsula, sending a beam of rosy light across our southbound track. Suddenly all the wildlife in the Orlean Strait was spot lit as if for solo performance: kelp gulls, Antarctic terns, southern fulmars, and even the delicate dance of the Wilson’s storm-petrel. Best of all it highlighted the blows of several groups of humpback whales feeding happily out in the calm waters. Tall plumes of rosy mist, succeeded by the slow-motion curl of giant flukes as they dove.
Straight after breakfast we had reached our destination for a morning landing: Mikkelsen Harbour at the southern tip of Trinity Island. Choppy waters and a keen wind prompted us to make a sheltered landing at the back of the small island, onto a beach literally covered with whale bones. On board we have with us Bob Pitman, cetacean expert from La Jolla, California. He and our archaeologist Peter Wilson came ashore to take bone samples from over 25 skulls here that date from the intensive whaling over a century ago. They all appear to be blue whales, the biggest prize for the hungry harpoons of that era. Though all this ceased 50 years ago, a blue whale is still an incredibly rare sight in Antarctica. The DNA from these bones may help us understand why they are taking so long to recover, and whence the pitifully few new pioneers originate. For the rest of us, it was a grand chance to encounter five lounging Weddell seals in the snow, a few frisky fur seals, and to climb the hill for a view of the bay and the huge tumbling glaciers behind us. Gentoo chicks were trotting around on the rocks, and already the first adults were hunched behind sheltering rocks for their full moult period. Those of us lacking rocks to shelter behind could commiserate. This is the last task of summer for them: they will shed every single feather and grow a brand-new drysuit fit for the Antarctic winter. An essential upgrade, but one which condemns them to three weeks solitary: no fun, food, or frolics in the ocean.
For our afternoon frolics we tucked the ship into Cierva Cove and took to our Zodiacs to explore a world of falling snow and glacial ice. So many magic moments: a sudden fishing fleet of gentoo penguins surfacing in unison; crabeater seals on ice floes, sleeping off their midnight banquet of krill; a lone, languorous leopard seal hauled out on ice, the very epitome of feline grace and athleticism, bullet head, battleship gray, and a set of teeth that gives penguins nightmares. Looming out of the drifting snow, huge icebergs with giant blue ice caverns and one with a dangerously seductive arch. Best of all, to gasps of surprise, a sleek black minke whale surfaced within yards of the Zodiacs, its hooked fin arcing down into the depths. What a diary of delights this day has brought us, perfect polar paintings all.
