Subantarctic Wildlife

At last we have arrived in Cape Town! A future post will describe our experience on the long cruise from Puerto Williams, Chile. For now, however, we will just look at some of the interesting creatures we saw during our stops in South Georgia along the way. If you don’t like penguins and seals, however, you can easily skip this entry. You will also need good internet service, as there are lots of video clips.

What is it about these animals that is so appealing to us? Part of it may be that they do not fear us, but instead are quite interested in our visit to their habitat. Witness Henry with a little fur seal…..

Also some clownish moments….

You don’t want to get too close, as their bite is reputed to be quite painful. Fortunately, however, most of the larger ones are pretty darned busy catching up on some zzzzzs.

King penguins are gregarious and numerous, to say the least. Something like 400,000 breeding pairs live in South Georgia, more than 10,000 in this colony alone.

Friendly characters….. when Zodiacs full of people land on the beach, they waddle there to see what’s going on…..

They are absolutely gorgeous individually…..

…. but somehow in groups, you expect them to break into song or ask a penetrating question about the nature of existence. Or just do a goofy comedy routine.

Elephant seals are huge – females weigh up to a ton, and males up to 4 tons! During their molting season, they tend to flop around together in rafts, only occasionally breaking into ungainly activity.

Especially near land, albatrosses soar around the ship. They are magnificent birds.

These animals can only exist in their current circumstances in the extremely remote, cold and pristine environment of the subantarctic. It’s not an area that everyone wants to visit, and that’s good. Hopefully they will continue to thrive.

We did not get a chance to spend much time on land due to weather (to be explained further later.) A couple of shots from one of the rare excursions……

More soon!