Antarctica Adventure #15 - Deception Island & Racing for the Drake

Antarctica Adventure #15 - Deception Island & Racing for Drake

Our last Antarctic adventure stop!!

Early morning wake up!  4:45am, so that we were prepared to watch our entry through Neptunes Bellow's into the caldera of Deception Island by 6am.  

Spent an hour & a half wandering on our own along the black ash covered beach looking at the remains of an old Norwegian Whaling Operation.  Now a historical site,  it tells the story of the mass killings of whales many many years ago.   This flooded volcanic basin (caldera) is reminiscent of Santorini, but with a little more snow & ice!!  History tells us that an estimated 86,000 whales were processed here.

 

There was even a hangar & runway where they landed the Twin Otters they used in their operation.

Lots of other equipment & building strowed along the beach.  It's all a part of a World Heritage site.  Apparently when they were finally forced to stop, they had almost filled this bay with whale carcasses.  For many years they had not bothered to clean up after themselves & the water was trashed with rotton whale bones & skins because they only wanted the blubber.  Fortunately the sometimes berated environmentalists stepped in & forced them to change their ways.

Saw lots of birds - Brown Skua, Kelp Gulls, Antarctic Terns & Chinstrap penguins.  Even had a Crabeater seal swimming up & down along the beach.  Lots of the beautiful Cape Petrels too - both flying & on the water.

Claudia pointed out Salps!  Had to look up the definition!  Still don't really understand, but apparently a jellyfish like creature - 

A salp or salpa is a barrel-shaped, planktic tunicate. It moves by contracting, thereby pumping water through its gelatinous body, one of the most efficient examples of jet propulsion in the animal kingdom. The salp strains the pumped water through its internal feeding filters, feeding on phytoplankton.

Education continued when she pointed out krill!  Huh?  Looked like shrimp to me!!

Back on board by 9am, we started our race to the Drake. This was my last chance to show how the guys would always meet us to help us back on board.  And the status board where we had to place our number to manually show we were on board.  Never got a picture of the guys helping us with our boots or the trays of disenfectants that we had to walk in as we stepped onto the ship.  They are doing their best to keep down the transfer of unwanted flora/fauna from one location to the other.  Haven't been able to stop the barnacles that have arrived from the fishing boats & tourist cruise ships.  They are killing off some of the endiginous sea life.

The cruise out of the bay entrace was interesting.  Lots of birds around, multiple penquin colonies & penquins swimming all around us too.

There is a massive storm headed to the region & we are going to try to out run it. Fingers crossed & praying.  In the meantime they kept us busy with briefings & a cocktail party with half priced drinks.

The map is looking pretty complete!  We have gotten to see a lot!!  It's been an exciting voyage!

Into the Drake - so far huge swells, but not a lot of wind.  No whitecaps.  Very hard to walk without looking like you are drunk! Still listened to Saul for a bit & had another towel creature.  What???