Pam's Travel Blog: Antarctic Adventure #13 - Lemaire Channel & Tor, 25 Dec 2019

Antarctic Adventure #13 - Lemaire Channel , 25 Dec 2019

Merry Christmas everyone. What a day to remember!!!!!

Entering the Channel!

Wish Maria - our Team Experienced Leader

Those little black specks are Gentoo penguins up on the iceberg.

Here they are blown up a little!

This morning we did a scenic cruise through Lemaire Channel. Lemaire Channel is a strait off Antarctica, between Kiev Peninsula in the mainland's Graham Land and Booth Island. Nicknamed "Kodak Gap" by some, it is one of the top tourist destinations in Antarctica; steep cliffs hem in the iceberg-filled passage, which is 11 km long and just 1,600 metres wide at its narrowest point. This channel is often blocked by ice & high winds, but we were able to navigate into it for about an hour's cruise. We saw lots of Humpback whales, Weddell Seals & Crabeater Seals on ice floes (really don't eat crab, they eat Krill, but named from the Norwegian word for Krill that sounds like crab!), the nose of an Elephant Seal (we originally thought it was a rock!), lots of penguins porpoising in the water, & just amazing incredible scenery. This will definitely be a Christmas morning to remember. Even added to our bird list with Wilson's Storm Petrel dipping & diving in the waves. Hoping to take a Zodiac cruise around Torgersen Island this afternoon & get to see Palmer Station. Can't land there as they are not allowing visitors this week, but we'll cruise by to see it. This was our furthest point south for the trip - 65th parallel.

Here's a short video of the penguins in the water. They were really fun to watch. These were Gentoos.

Note the bowl of ice cream with the icebergs in the background!!

Lunch was an Antarctic Barbeque - outside on the back deck! Amazing! Never had ice cream while watching glaciers! It was actually quite comfortable. No wind at all - I think the Captain had slowed us down & faced to block us from the wind.

Then we spent about 15 heart stopping minutes as about 5 different pods of humpbacks swam past hunting krill! Probably saw 40 tails swooping up & over. Have a video with some of them, but too slow to upload now. Feel lucky that I got some pictures uploaded! Even the naturalists on board were excited. Said we'd never see such a display again! Assumed it must have been an extreme layer of krill on the surface.

On to our next stop - Torgersen Island, we were again treated to an incredible display of Bubble Circle feeding by 3 humpback whales right by our boat!! The first group of zodiacs were right next to them & then we got to disembark & see them too. Maria told us later that in 30 years of viewing whales, she had only seen this once before & it was not so close. Again, all the guides were incredible excited. The 3 whales would circle & shallow dive, then send up bubbles to trap the krill & pop through the bubbles with mouths open to catch the krill. Saw their noses pop out over & over. Almost all of these pictures were provided by Rich! Soooooo exciting!

We saw lots of Elephant seals on the shore. This one was a "weener" because he had recently abandoned by Mom as the only way to "ween" him of the rich 70% fat milk that she had provided during his 6-8 weeks growth period. They sometimes gain more than 200 lbs! His initial fur is not totally water proof, so until his molt is completed, he can't stay in the water.

We had our final exciting incident as we were finishing up our moment of silence (we enjoyed at least one of them during each outing to keep us focused on the how & why we were here!). We heard a crackling noise & this huge iceberg next to us cracked in half & as it rolled over, it dumped 2 Crabeater seals into the water. We circled the iceberg & found one of the seals swimming beside the remaining berg & looking at it as if to say "what did I do to deserve that?" Or maybe "Mom warned me there would be days like this!!" Once again, our guides said they had never had that experience with such a huge iceberg so close. We're getting lots of firsts! I didn't touch up this picture - they actually looked that blue! It was totally amazing.

We continued our zodiac cruise around Torgenson Island & got close ups of Weddal Seals & Adele Penguins. Also a Storm Petral nesting.

Just to remind us that it was Christmas, there were Gingerbread houses everywhere with lots of Christmas cookies & Fruitcake (as if we weren't getting enough calories with the ice cream!!). And strangely enough our bartender wore a Mexican sombrero?