Day Seven - 10th December - Orne Harbour and whales close enough to touch

Chinstrap penguin

Chinstrap Penguins
Another calm day, albeit with high cloud, saw us making our second landing on the Antarctic Continent proper at Orne Harbour, where we climbed the relatively steep-sided glacier to reach the Chinstrap Penguin rookeries on the exposed rocky outcrops.

Intermediate in size and bill length between the Adelies and the Gentoos, the Chinstraps also have rather higher-pitched calls. Unlike the other two species, the black on the heads of these birds was confined to the crown, with the exception of the narrow black band that extends from the nape, down the sides of the face and joins under the chin. This almost makes the birds look as if they're wearing a policeman's helmet, and the name Chinstrap is very apt. Unlike the Adelies and Gentoos, which have dark eyes, the Chinstraps have amber eyes with small black pupils.

These birds are intrepid climbers and we saw them jumping out of the water at the foot of the glacier and then undertaking the long climb up to their nests, several hundred feet up the glacier.

A Close Encounter with Gentle Giants
Later, cruising past Spiggot Rock, we saw five Southern Giant Petrels, one of which was feeding on a seal carcass. These birds, the Sheathbills and the Skuas perform an important function, scavenging all sorts of waste.

In the afternoon we set out for another Zodiac cruise in Wilhelmina Bay. We had seen two Antarctic Minke Whales reasonably well from the ship and we hoped to have good views of them from the Zodiac.

Blue Iceberg

There was extensive sea ice in the bay and many huge icebergs and we had not long moved off from the Ioffe when we located the whales. For the next hour and a half they both spent quite a lot of their time investigating the half a dozen Zodiacs arranged in a large ring formation with their engines switched off.

Most views of the whales were obtained when they surfaced to breathe, often close enough to hear the rush of air being expelled through the blowhole. On other occasions the whales would spy hop, which is when they surface almost vertically so as to bring their heads out of the water to see what is going on at the surface.

Most thrillingly, however, on several occasions these great animals passed right underneath our Zodiac, close enough to have scratched them on the back if we'd been able to put our hands in the water. Like the Killer Whales, the pale areas on the Minkes were stained yellow by algae.

Although the Antarctic Minke Whale is one of the smaller baleen whales, i.e. those that feed by filtering krill and small fish from the water, these animals were still about 25' long (the Zodiacs are 18' long) and probably weighed in the region of seven or eight tonnes. To have such a close encounter with these gentle giants was undoubtedly one of the highlights of the cruise and we felt very privileged to have been the object of their harmless curiosity.

The atmosphere at dinner, as the Ioffe steamed north towards the South Shetland Islands, was one of euphoria at our encounter with the Minke Whales and the sense that it had been a fitting finale to our time in Antarctica proper.

Day 8 - South Shetland Islands »