The early morning wake up call from Pippa confirmed the news I was expecting. The ship had abandoned the plan of heading into Southern Weddell Sea to try to get close enough to the Snow Hill Island Emperor Penguin colony. I wasn't surprised, given it hadn't been a realistic option in my eyes, since I saw the amount of ice in the Antarctic Sound and Northern Weddell Sea. Pippa's Plan B was to lay on a second scenic flight around the Antarctic Sound. I was in the first group to fly, but I decided to give it a miss.
Plans for a long relaxed breakfast were curtailed when an announcement from the bridge said, that flights were on hold as the previous evening's Orca pod had reappeared. Fortunately, I had eaten, so I headed straight back to the cabin for the camera and cold weather gear, before heading up to the top deck.
The Orca pod were hunting, but it wasn't easy to see what they were chasing. This was made a lot harder given I was mainly focusing on photography, rather than looking with the bins. But it later became clear they were chasing Gentoo Penguins. Having seen video on the BBC of this Ecotype hunting Penguins, the Penguins agility makes them very hard to catch. I did wonder afterwards if the Orca were pushing the Gentoo Penguins towards the ship and using the hull as a barrier to limit the area the Gentoo Penguins could use.
At the end of the day briefing, the Expedition staff suggested that the adults Orca were using the dead Gentoo Penguins to teach them to catch the Penguins.
The Orca pod attracted in a few Seabirds looking for an easy meal.
Finally, the Orca pod moved on, which allowed the helicopter team to start flying operations.
Once the flights had completed, we started to work our way West through the Antarctic Sound, as we started our journey to the South Shetland Islands.
By this stage in the trip, I had picked up the ship's bug, that many of the passengers had gone down with. The many very early starts and very long days probably hadn't helped me avoid it. It was more than a bad regular cough and was leaving many of the passengers, including myself very tired. My plan was to have a lazy day, catch up with lost sleep and try to get rid of the bug before we headed North. This plan worked and I got over the worst of tiredness and cough. However, some of the other passengers were clearly struggling to clear it out of their systems. I wanted to be able to spend as much of the time as I could looking for Cetaceans as we crossed North through the Beagle Channel.
We spent the rest of the day heading along the Antarctic Sound and towards the South Shetland Islands.