Trips

This page is devoted to Birds, Penguins, and Seals.

There were many albatross sightings, but never when I had my camera in hand. Mostly, we saw the Cape Petrels and some Skuas.

Cape Petrels
Cape Petrels
Cape Petrels
Notice the beautiful concentric ripples created by this bird's landing
As observed previously, our large ship really couldn't get very close to the penguins. Usually, identification had to be left to the Expedition Team who had the very high powered binoculars. You could still get a sense of the very large numbers of penguins nesting in the rookery areas and of the numbers out on the floating ice sheets. We also saw many penguins in the water - singly and in groups called rafts. All of the 17 or 19 species of penguins live in the southern hemisphere. Antarctica has the Chinstrap, Emperor, Gentoo, Adelie, King (occasionally), and Macaroni. We have seen all but the Emperor, who is found further south.
Penguin nesting or "rookery" area at the Chilean research station
At the Chilean research station
At the Chilean research station
On the rocks - it is not obvious how they managed to get there (remember, they do not fly!)
A beach full
More!
Penguin ramp in the snow. They slide down the snow in their bellies - it is very cute.
Out on an iceberg
They are just all over the place!
Dwarfed by the land
A Gentoo porpoising through the water
A "raft" of penguins headed somewhere
Another raft
We really didn't see but a few seals - Crabeaters and Leopard - and all of them were at quite a distance and mostly resting on icebergs.
First sighting	Lazy Crabeater seal
Someone had lunch - Leopard seals	The little guy just getting out of the water couldn't make up his mind, as you can see in the series of photos below. He also had to make several attempts each time he decided to return.
Looks better down there	In again
Almost	Made it this time

Continue on next page