I had set my alarm for another early start at 04:30. It was well after first light, but having seen an Emperor Penguin, I had allowed myself a lie-in. After a quick cuppa tea, I headed out to find I was the first passenger on the top deck. We were in an area of open water which was just the other side of Rosamel Island. This wasn't surprising given the amount of ice in the Antarctic Sound and the Northern Weddell Sea.
About 05:30, I spotted an Emperor Penguin in the open water. It wasn't close, but it was clearly an Emperor Penguin. Frustratingly, it dived after about forty-five seconds and I failed to relocate it again. It's a shame there weren't others who had got up early, as a few extra pairs of eyes might have helped refind it. Still it was great to have found my own Emperor Penguin.
About an hour after seeing the Emperor Penguin, I spotted a pod of four Orca hunting along the edge of the pack ice. They weren't close, but they were surfacing fairly regularly. I was still the only passenger on the top deck, but a small group of Chinese passengers were on the next deck below mine. Fortunately, one spoke reasonable English and he was able to tell his fellow travellers what I had seen. They were pleased to see the Orca. The Orca disappeared after about ten minutes. I suspected they had dived under the ice, before coming up in the edge of the next area of open water.
The Orca Type B (Large) are also known as Pack Ice Orca. They are large compared to some of the other Orca Ecotypes. Their eye patch is very large and oriented parallel to the body axis. They are more grey-and-white in colouration with a darker grey dorsal cape and pale grey sides. However, after some time in Antarctic waters, they often develop a dirty yellowish appearance caused by a coating of
diatoms. It is believed that they undertake rapid, round trip migrations to the tropics, but they spends most of the year in Antarctic waters. The diatoms die off in the warmer waters and the Orca lose their yellowish colouration. They can work as a team to knock Seals off small ice floes, with Weddell Seals being their preferred food. However, they are capable of catching the larger and more powerful Leopard Seals, but there is a higher risk that a Leopard Seal could inflict damage to them before they killed it.
It had been an excellent start to the morning and well worth the early alarm. I went to celebrate when the call to breakfast finally came.
After breakfast, the ship started to push its way through the leads, to see if we could find a way further South. We managed to get a few miles further South, but not enough that would give us any realistic chance of getting close to Snow Hill Island. As we had good visibility and we were unable to get much further South due to the amount of ice, the helicopter pilots, Pippa and the Captain decided that about ten in the morning, the ship would start scenic helicopter flights. The plan for the scenic flights was slightly different to the plan had we been able to visit the Emperor Penguin colony. We would take only twelve passengers in a flight of the three helicopters, which would allow everybody to have a window seat for the twenty minute flight. We had been divided into groups and all the four berth cabin passengers were in the final group to fly. I didn't mind being in the last group, as I wanted to keep looking given the ship hadn't moved more than a few miles from where I had seen the Emperor Penguin and the Orcas. It would have been a different feeling had it been a flight to the Emperor Penguin colony.
As we moved around the open water, there was plenty of ice to scan. There was a reasonable selection of interesting subjects to photograph.
Snow Petrel was one of the Seabirds I was most keen to see on my previous Antarctica trip. We saw the first in the Drygalski Fjord in South Georgia and then a few most days in the Drake Passage and Antarctica on my first visit. Similarly, we saw a few as we crossed the Drake Passage and in the Antarctic Sound. But they are a hard species to get a good photo, as I've never seen them very close to the ship.
Unfortunately, the ship had only managed to fly about a third of the flights, before low cloud grounded flying at lunchtime. There was another window in the afternoon, when the visibility improved to allow more flights to depart, before finally more low cloud grounded the flights for the rest of the day. Personally, it wasn't a big problem for me that I didn't get called for my flight, as I didn't think that we would get an ice-free window to allow us to head South towards Snow Hill Island. Therefore, I reckoned there would be plenty of time on the following day for the remaining scenic flights to leave.
It had been a good day, even if we hadn't managed to get any significantly further South during the day. However, with the amount of pack ice between us and Snow Hill Island, we really needed the sea currents and wind to move a lot of the drifting ice to give us a chance to getting clear water to our South. There was one more good Bird seen during the day and I've reserved that for the next Blog Post.