I woke early to find we were in the Antarctic Sound, surrounded by lots of ice floes. I spent a lot of time checking all the Penguin parties. There were lots of Adelie Penguins, but there wasn't any Emperor Penguins with them.
While there were a number of passengers who were keen to see Birds and Cetaceans, there were only two Birders on board: myself and American Birder, Nick. Generally, Nick preferred to be outside on the deck below the bridge or sometimes near the bows, when that was possible. It was Nick's first visit to Antarctica and understandably he was keen to get good photos from the outer decks. If it had been my first visit, I would probably have been on similar decks. However, as this was my second visit to Antarctica, my strategy was to stay in the bridge as it was the highest and best viewpoint to look for Cetaceans or Emperor Penguins while we were moving. As a pleasant bonus, it was warmer, which helped when I was watching for hours at a time. I could get onto one of the bridge wings quickly, but there was only a fifty-fifty chance that the open bridge door was on the correct side of the ship as the latest sighting. If not, I had a long walk back down to deck 6 to get outside and onto the correct side of the ship. So, while I had a better view, I was limited to photographing sightings through the bridge window. That wasn't ideal, but the main objectives of this trip was to look for Emperor Penguins and hopefully see some Antarctic Petrels well, rather than Bird photography.
We anchored up in the morning to allow the passengers to have a zodiac ride in the ice around Kinnes Cove, which has a twenty-five thousand pair colony of Adelie Penguins. I decided to stay on board as I hoped I would have a better viewpoint for seeing an Emperor Penguin. It was a gamble, as if the zodiacs had found an Emperor Penguin, I would have been one of the few passengers to have not seen it. In the end, no Emperor Penguins were seen. Once the zodiacs were back on board it was time for lunch, while the ship slowly moved East along the Antarctic Sound.
One of the highlights of the morning was seeing a couple of Antarctic Petrels belt past the ship at one point, but they were too quick for any photos and very quickly they were gone. Still, it was good to one properly. After I got back from my first visit to Antarctica, I found a few photos of the only one that raced past a giant iceberg I was photographing, which none of us saw at the time.
We were slowly making our way through the ice floes. The ship could only travel at a bit over two knots in these conditions, as the bridge crew weaved through the ice gaps to pushed through lighter ice floes. It was like being in a maze where you could see the way ahead and be able to push through some gaps in the hedges, but where other routes were totally impenetrable. Every now and then we would break through into areas of open water that was a mile or two in length. The open water looked good for finding an Orca pod, but we didn't see any during the day. However, we were aware they were in the area, as we had seen a larger distant cruise ship and the expedition staff confirmed that ship had seen them earlier in the morning. It was just a case of looking and I was hopefully we would connect over the next few days.
By mid-afternoon, we were approaching the Argentinian Petrel base on Dundee Island. There was a large expanse of sea ice extending out from Dundee Island. The crew decided to gentle ram into this solid ice sheet until the ship came to a halt. One of the expedition team, Sam, had worked in Antarctica for an extended contract advising the base on safe travel on the ice. Sam and some of the expedition team disembarked onto the ice to check it out and after about a half hour, we had an announcement that those who wanted to, could get off the ship. There was a route across the ice sheet that had been marked out for about a kilometre for people to walk. I decided that my best option was to get the scope and tripod and start scanning the sea floes and open water for Orca and Emperor Penguins from the top deck.
At the pre-dinner briefing, Pippa said there was still a large amount of solid ice floes in the fifty miles between the ship and Snow Hill Island. They were hoping that the sea and wind conditions might move those ice floes further East into the Weddell Sea, but for now there wasn't a lot of chance in us getting close enough to be able to use the helicopters to reach the Snow Hill Emperor Penguin colony. In addition to getting close to Snow Hill Island, we also needed a realistic long window when we could all land on the island and more importantly get off safely again. Each passenger would have needed two to three hours to allow them to walk a couple of kilometres to the colony and back again and obviously have a reasonable amount of time at the colony. To do this we would need to have a day long window of good weather and be fairly close to the colony. Given the amount of ice floes, Pippa said the plan was the ship would stay at the edge of the pack ice overnight and see if the winds turned in our favour. It still seemed unlikely that we would get close to Snow Hill Island.
Having drawn a blank in finding an Emperor Penguin or an Orca pod while the other passengers were walking on the ice, I didn't hurry to get back on the top deck after dinner. But I decided to give it another go on the top deck. I found Nick and his partner, Caroline had beaten me to the deck and Nick was staring intently through his scope. A few minutes earlier they had found the first Emperor Penguin standing on distant ice. Some of the Expedition staff had also seen it from the bridge, but they hadn't announced this news to the passengers yet. Nick quickly got me onto the right bit of ice, but there was a small ridge of ice next to where he had seen it and it had either walked behind that ridge or popped back into the water. After a few worrying minutes, it reappeared from behind the ice ridge. It was the best part of a half mile away. It needed the scope on a high magnification to get a decent view, but it was great to see my first Emperor Penguin. At that point, one of my cabin mates, Rob, appeared and I lent him my scope to have a look. A couple of minutes later when I went to have another look, the Emperor Penguin had disappeared again. Sadly, it didn't reappear.
Pippa and the Captain decided to depart from the ice sheet and see if we could get closer. An announcement was finally made to tell the passengers about the Emperor Penguin, but it was already too late as it had disappeared. Having reversed back out of the ice, I was expecting we would sail the half mile or so to where we had seen the Emperor Penguin and to hang around that area. I was surprised and disappointed to find that we didn't stop and we kept moving towards the Northern end of the Weddell Sea. That could have been a costly mistake for most of the passengers.
I said on deck looking until we lost the light, but there was no further sign of any Emperor Penguins. Frustratingly, we had quickly left the one we knew about long behind us. It was time to set the alarm for another early start, albeit having seen an Emperor Penguin, I allowed myself a lie-in to about 04:30.