Cape Washington - December 22, 2008
Cape Washington - December 22, 2008
By Blog.Admin
This morning we woke up at Cape Washington. This is one of the largest emperor penguin rookeries in this Ross Sea region. Again we had sunshine, no wind and we had emperors all around us. After some effort, which took almost 2 hours, Captain Pavel got us into the ice, so the gangway was lowered and we could go out and see the penguins.
Jonas told us we would have the whole day here and the ship would not leave until around 7.30 p.m. What a day! The colony was beginning to break up and we now had around 5 satellite groups of adults and chicks and a lot of traffic to and from the edge of the open water. It was fantastic to just listen to the sounds of the emperors calling and the chicks whistling. The adult emperors are big birds and they are very self contained. They rarely show much reaction to people visiting them, but just go about what they are doing. It was fantastic to see them flopping on to their fairly large bellies and then watch them tobogganing across the ice using their feet as small propellers. The chicks were different as they were extremely curious and wanted to see who these visitors were. Most of them were ready to fledge and had their smart adult feathers already showing through the last of their down. We did see some chicks being fed, but most were probably ready to go to sea to fend for themselves.
We had lots and lots of Snow Petrels flying around us, and they looked so beautiful against the deep blue of the sky. As is usual in this location, we had wonderful grounded icebergs and sometimes it was difficult to know where to look. We had so much time to just enjoy everything – the wildlife, the scenery and Antarctica in general.
What a privilege to be in such an amazing place.
Finally we all trooped back on board and then our chefs served an amazing Black and White Dinner. Most of us tried to join the theme by wearing only black and white clothing. After dinner the evening light was magnificent as we slowly moved away from Cape Washington.