Our first Antarctic Peninsula landing was on Paulet Island, albeit this volcanic island is about thirty miles offshore from the actual Antarctic mainland. But it's a great place to start the Antarctic landings as the island is home to around one hundred thousand pairs of Adelie Penguins.
We were soon ashore on Paulet Island and greeted by hundreds of endearing Adelie Penguins.
The first Adelie Penguins were described by Jacques Hombron and Honore Jacquinot, two French surgeons and naturalists, on a French Expedition to Antarctica in the late 1830s and early 1840s, led by Jules Dumont d'Urville. They first specimens were collected from part of the continent which had been called Terre Adelie, which was named after Dumont d'Urville's wife, Adele.
There were plenty of Adelie Penguins to watch and photograph. It's always important to lower the camera and just enjoy everything that is going on when you are near a Penguin colony.
With so many distracting Adelie Penguins, it would be easy to walk past the history of the 1903 Swedish Antarctic Expedition on Paulet Island. But there is another survival story here. The Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901 – 03 was the first Swedish Antarctic Expedition. It was led by Otto Nordenskjold and Carl Anton Larsen. Their ship, Antarctic, became stuck in the ice in Feb 1903 and was wrecked on 12 Feb. A photo of the ship stuck in the ice can be found here. The crew of twenty-one dragged the ship's boats about twenty-five miles over the ice and after sixteen days they reached Paulet Island. They built this stone hut to shelter in during the bleak Antarctic winter. Additionally, they built a cairn on the highest point to attract the attention of passing ships. But it would be hard to imagine how this cairn would have been seen by a passing ship, without a fire. Over that Antarctic Winter, sailor Ole Christian Wennersgaard died and his grave is part on the Paulet Island historic site and it is now fenced in to keep the Adelie Penguins off it. Their survival on, and rescue from, Paulet Island is described by Carl Skottsberg and Carl Larsen in the book Antarctic published in 1904.
The contrast showing how times have changed. One hundred and twenty years on from when Nordenskjold, Larsen and their crew pulled their boats onto the island and built this stone hut to survive the Antarctic Winter, we arrive in a comfortable expedition ship for the morning. We know we will be off the island by 12:30. The Nordenskjold, Larsen and their crew didn't know if they would be found alive.
The main path continued away from the beach to above the beach part of the Adelie Penguin colony. However, there was a strict policy of giving way to any passing Adelie Penguins.
Continuing up the path lead to a relatively flat area above the beach part of the colony.
Once we were above the beach part of the Adelie Penguin colony, we could safely walk across to the base of the hillside, which hosted another part of the colony. This was as far as we could go.
There was also a reasonable-sized Antarctic Shag colony on the hillside.
I decided to slowly head back to the beach to take some more Adelie Penguin photos.
Eventually, I was back on the beach. There were plenty of Adelie Penguins porpoising just off the beach, so I tried to get some photos.
It had been a fantastic start to our visit to Antarctica and it wasn't even lunchtime on the first day. There was still plenty of potential as we departed from Paulet Island and headed to Brown Bluff for an afternoon landing on the Antarctic Peninsula. But things too an unexpected turn in a positive direction which resulted in our arrival at Brown Bluff being delayed a bit. More on that in the next Blog Post.