Port Lockroy & Dallmann Bay, Antarctica
Our day was filled with kayaking, history, a shopping extravaganza at Port Lockroy, and whales in Dallmann Bay, all the while framed by the magnificent snow and ice of Antarctica.
We awoke with our ship docked in the shorefast ice of Port Lockroy, a marvelous natural harbor tucked into the south end of Wienke Island. It was discovered and named by French explorer Jean Baptiste Charcot in 1904 when his expedition ship Français was in urgent need of repair. In the early years of the 20th Century whalers used it as a safe harbor to process their catch. The bones of great whales – blues, fins, and humpbacks – still line the bay and litter the shallow water. Mooring lines and whalers’ graffiti can be seen on the rocks. In 1944, as part of a secret program (Operation Tabarin) to establish listening posts in the Southern Ocean, the British established “Base A” at Port Lockroy. One of the first soldiers posted there wrote, “They won’t tell us where we are going, but it must be someplace nice because they have issued us all sunglasses.” After the war this effort evolved into a research program named the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, which later became known as the British Antarctic Survey. Valuable Antarctic research, particularly on the upper atmosphere, was done by scientists at Base A. Now the former base is maintained as a museum, post office, and is the southernmost souvenir shop (run by the U.K. Antarctic Heritage Trust). We were happy to have the four personnel of the station travel with us from Ushuaia to Port Lockroy where they will spend the summer. We were even happier to visit them in their new home, as Station Manager Rick Atkinson cranked up the Victrola and took a spin about the dance floor (aka the bar.) They share their island home with gentoo penguins that are now just beginning their nesting around the buildings. This was our final opportunity for our cameras to capture the penguins - their comings and goings, and the carrying of rocks for their nests. Penguins carried stones; we carried bags with postcards, t-shirts, caps, and other precious mementos back to the Zodiacs for our reluctant departure.
Over lunch the National Geographic Endeavour crossed the Gerlache Strait to enter Dallmann Bay, between Anvers and Brabant Islands. Just as we entered the Bay sharp eyes caught sight of a group of whales traveling in close formation. They were beaked whales; from their occurrence in these cold Antarctic waters, they are probably Southern bottlenose whales. The beaked whales, as a group, are some of the least known mammals on our planet. We know them to be deep-diving whales, spending most of their time out of our sight in the ocean depths. There they feed on squid that they find by echo-location. Consistent with this behavior, the group gave us a few quick looks and then they were gone. Congratulations to the attentive observers who spotted the group and snapped the digital photos that document their occurrence at this time and place. We continued cruising through Dallmann Bay, finding leopard seals resting on floating ice. The red stains on their floes indicated that they were here feeding on krill. Just as we were ready to depart the Bay we spotted three humpback whales, early arrivers from their winter spent in warm water off the Pacific coast of South and Central America. In a previous year a humpback whale photographed near this spot by guests on our ship was subsequently spotted again off of Costa Rica. Thus we are able to contribute to the accrual of knowledge about Antarctica. We watched these whales busily lunge-feeding on krill that were swarming near the water surface. Their dives were shallow, and they rose to the surface with huge mouths agape to engulf tons of water and the krill that it contained.
And then we left, headed northward, into the infamous Drake Passage.
Our day was filled with kayaking, history, a shopping extravaganza at Port Lockroy, and whales in Dallmann Bay, all the while framed by the magnificent snow and ice of Antarctica.
We awoke with our ship docked in the shorefast ice of Port Lockroy, a marvelous natural harbor tucked into the south end of Wienke Island. It was discovered and named by French explorer Jean Baptiste Charcot in 1904 when his expedition ship Français was in urgent need of repair. In the early years of the 20th Century whalers used it as a safe harbor to process their catch. The bones of great whales – blues, fins, and humpbacks – still line the bay and litter the shallow water. Mooring lines and whalers’ graffiti can be seen on the rocks. In 1944, as part of a secret program (Operation Tabarin) to establish listening posts in the Southern Ocean, the British established “Base A” at Port Lockroy. One of the first soldiers posted there wrote, “They won’t tell us where we are going, but it must be someplace nice because they have issued us all sunglasses.” After the war this effort evolved into a research program named the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, which later became known as the British Antarctic Survey. Valuable Antarctic research, particularly on the upper atmosphere, was done by scientists at Base A. Now the former base is maintained as a museum, post office, and is the southernmost souvenir shop (run by the U.K. Antarctic Heritage Trust). We were happy to have the four personnel of the station travel with us from Ushuaia to Port Lockroy where they will spend the summer. We were even happier to visit them in their new home, as Station Manager Rick Atkinson cranked up the Victrola and took a spin about the dance floor (aka the bar.) They share their island home with gentoo penguins that are now just beginning their nesting around the buildings. This was our final opportunity for our cameras to capture the penguins - their comings and goings, and the carrying of rocks for their nests. Penguins carried stones; we carried bags with postcards, t-shirts, caps, and other precious mementos back to the Zodiacs for our reluctant departure.
Over lunch the National Geographic Endeavour crossed the Gerlache Strait to enter Dallmann Bay, between Anvers and Brabant Islands. Just as we entered the Bay sharp eyes caught sight of a group of whales traveling in close formation. They were beaked whales; from their occurrence in these cold Antarctic waters, they are probably Southern bottlenose whales. The beaked whales, as a group, are some of the least known mammals on our planet. We know them to be deep-diving whales, spending most of their time out of our sight in the ocean depths. There they feed on squid that they find by echo-location. Consistent with this behavior, the group gave us a few quick looks and then they were gone. Congratulations to the attentive observers who spotted the group and snapped the digital photos that document their occurrence at this time and place. We continued cruising through Dallmann Bay, finding leopard seals resting on floating ice. The red stains on their floes indicated that they were here feeding on krill. Just as we were ready to depart the Bay we spotted three humpback whales, early arrivers from their winter spent in warm water off the Pacific coast of South and Central America. In a previous year a humpback whale photographed near this spot by guests on our ship was subsequently spotted again off of Costa Rica. Thus we are able to contribute to the accrual of knowledge about Antarctica. We watched these whales busily lunge-feeding on krill that were swarming near the water surface. Their dives were shallow, and they rose to the surface with huge mouths agape to engulf tons of water and the krill that it contained.
And then we left, headed northward, into the infamous Drake Passage.
