Sensory Overload (St. Andrew's Bay & Ocean Harbor, South Georgia) - 3 February 2009

Over a month later and looking through the pictures still excites me.  Today was our first landing on South Georgia.  Several times during the other landings the folks who've been here before looked at our excitement and said "Just wait until South Georgia."  Now I understand why.

There was an optional landing this morning (around 6:30) I skipped, but Jennifer went on.  I think it was her favorite landing of the entire trip, and I'm kicking myself for not going.  The two landings I did, though, were spectacular.

We started off at St. Andrew's Bay, where we were immediately greeted by throngs of king penguins and baby fur seals.  You're supposed to keep a distance of 5 meters from the wildlife, but it's just impossible here.  It's also difficult to get a picture of a single penguin.

I like to think that this penguin harbors dreams of flying away from the hustle and bustle:

After the landing we climbed over a ridge to see the penguin colony proper, a breathtaking sight that demanded a panoramic picture:

There are a couple of researchers on the boat from Oceanites, an organization that tracks penguin populations.  The people on our boat weren't responsible for counting on South Georgia, but one of the researchers gave it a go anyway.  She stopped counting at 160,000 penguins.

It's not all penguins, though.  The Norwegian settlers brought reindeer with them.  Now, a hundred or so years later, the reindeer are part of a debate.  They're not indigenous, so there's one faction that would like to see them removed.  On the other hand, they're cute so getting rid of them isn't politically palatable.  Either way, it's still neat to see penguins and reindeer together:

If you're particularly sharp-eyed, like Jeremy, you may pick out brown-looking penguins.  Called "Oakum Boys,"  these are juvenile King Penguins.  The early explorers thought they were actually a separate species of penguin, but they're just waiting to molt.  Here's an "Oakum Boy" who was particularly curious:

I guess if this were Southern Georgia they'd be the Oak Ridge Boys... (You had to know it was coming)

The afternoon's landing was at Ocean Harbor.  We got to kayak around the wreck of the Bayard, an early iron-clad vessel, and also got a taste of the vicissitudes of Antarctic weather.  It went from sunny to blizzard to sunny, all in the course of a couple of hours.  Here's the snow:

And here's a picture of a seal modeling kelp as a hat:

In addition to the "normal" looking fur seals, there are also the occasional blond fur seals:

I'm not sure how many different times we asked the naturalists if the blond fur seals were at risk because they weren't camouflaged, but I'm sure they grew tired of answering.  Basically the seals are at the top of the food chain, so it doesn't matter what color they are.

One last picture of Ocean Harbor at Sunset, and then it was time to return to the ship for Dinner: