At Sea on the Southern Ocean

 The beautiful Cape Petrel, above and...

 below.

And the Giant Southern Petrel, one of the main predators of the south. 

 Looking up from our deck to the main deck and ...

from the third down to ours.

Tuesday, October 29^th.

I had breakfast this morning with John and Bruce, and a Canadian woman (Karen Fulton) who went to Cameron, Willowdale and Northview! I taught at Cameron and went to Northview. We threw a few names back and forth but no connection yet. (Later in the day we found two names she knew: Don Lazaro and the Argyles – she lived on Gwendolen!).

What a difference a day makes! The last two days were beautiful and sunny when we were on the Falkland Islands and today as we sailed away it was raining. Lucky us! However, our guides keep telling us that the seas are remaining calm and flat, although there is still definitely a swell.

Today was a day of being in school and learning. We had four lectures!

Lecture 1 Seals of the Southern Ocean by John.

Pinnipeds Lecture (part 1)

There are three families of Pinnipeds or seals: True Seals, Eared Seals and Walrus (which do not live in the southern hemisphere). They were land mammals that evolved and made their way back to the sea to exploit the food sources there.

Eared seals have ear flaps, can walk around on all fours because they have a pelvic girdle adaptation that allows them to rotate their rear flippers to behave more like back legs. They use their front flippers for propulsion and their genitalia and scrotum are external. Our lecturer John with his typical sense of humour said that you do not want to mess with an animal that can crawl across their rocky environment with their scrotum dragging on the ground – they are tough!

True seals are more slug-like and drag their back ends. They have no ear flap, use their rear flippers for propulsion and the genitalia are internal.

We will be arriving in South Georgia during the breeding season. The much larger males arrive at the beaches first, fight to establish territories and await the arrival of the females. The females give birth first and then come into oestrus which attracts the males.

When the females arrive on the beach, the goal of the males is to keep the females on their bit of beach, breed with as many as possible and to keep all other males out of their patch.

Interesting information: In terms of the human invasion of the polar regions, sealers came first (hunting seals for fur), whalers much later (for blubber and oils) and explorers still later (for claiming lands). Fur seals were hunted to near extinction but luckily survived in small colonies in remote areas. Today they have rebounded to pre-sealing days because whales have been decimated by whalers and there is much less competition for their main source of food: krill.

He talked about the South American sealion, which we will see in the Beagle Channel by Ushuaia; the Antarctica Fur Seal of South Georgia, with its fox-like nose and the Southern Elephant Seal, which is a true seal. He said it smells better dead than alive, and is a gigantic gas producing animal.

Seals demonstrate sexual dimorphism as the males are much larger than the females. Dimorphism can be observed by size, colour, etc.

The second part of this lecture will continue with the other seals we hope to see: Weddel, crabeaters, and leopard seals.

Lecture 2 ‘Penguins, What Else?’ By Marcelo Flores

Marcelo loves penguins and loves to poke fun at the other crew experts who talk about mammals or birds. The staff all have their own expertise and like to rib each other about things like a ‘little brown bird’ which Jonathan used to describe the southern most song bird, a bird that Marcelo loves and which almost went extinct do to rat predation.

He talked about Gentoo, Chinstrap, Rockhopper and King penguins. He pointed out different characteristics of all penguin species. Penguins are black and white for camouflage and thermal regulation. They are waterproof and suffer through a catastrophic moult once a year where they lose all of their waterproof feathers and cannot swim, which takes a lot of energy from them. Sometimes the older ones don’t survive the moult. Both male and female penguins have a clocaca, and it is when the two meet that sperm is transmitted to the female. Male penguins brood first while the female returns to the sea to feed and recover her energy. Emperor penguin males brood the whole time (think March of the Penguins) because the female has to go too far to reach the sea. Penguins eat fish, krill, cephalopods (squid, octopus), and crustaceans, different species eat different foods. Their beaks can give a hint as to what they eat. They demonstrate sexual dimorphism but only because the male is slightly larger than the female and it is only during mating can you tell which is which. Most species have one egg or chick because of the amount of energy needed to produce the egg and then raise the chick. Gentoo chicks chase their parent for food. Some species practise ‘creche’ behaviour: the chicks group together to keep warm and safe while parents are feeding. Sometimes they are protected by a couple of adults like a penguin daycare. A group of penguins in the water is called a ‘raft’ and a group on land is called a ‘waddle’.

Adelie and Emperor penguins are strictly Antarctic species. Gentoo, and Chinstrap live both in Antarctica and other southern islands.

Climate change affects chicks because they are covered with down for warmth but, as they are not waterproofed when they get soaked by rain (not snow) and then the weather gets cold they freeze to death.

Skuas and petrels predate penguins sometimes invasive foxes or rats. Rats are an invasive species introduced by European ships. They eat eggs and attack chicks.

Lecture 3 Cetaceans of the Southern Ocean by Hella.

Hella told us there are about 80 different species of whales and dolphins. She talked about the two main types of whales: baleen and toothed whales. Baleen whales (blue, humpback, fin,) are filter feeders and generally swallow huge amounts of water and they express the water and swallow the krill and fish that were in it. Toothed whales (sperm, orcas and the dolphins) are hunters and catch their prey using echolocation and their teeth.

Lecture 4 Scientist in Residence Brent, Science on the G Expedition.

Brent has been a scientist for 40 years. He outlined the problems of doing research in the southern oceans: the remoteness, the expense of getting there and establishing a base. GAdventures and the company he works for have formed a partnership. He has been allowed to piggyback onto our tourism trip so that he can do some research in the southern ocean thereby giving his company a cheaper way of reaching the area. He is doing counts of individuals in a colony, and studying vocal patterns of individuals to ascertain if they can be differentiated that way.

We also learned about icebergs calving off Antarctic ice shelves. The shelves are the leading edges of glaciers that are forced down and out over the ice by the weight of the ice and snow above and by gravity, until the action of the sea and their weight snap them off. In 2017 a 4000 sq km berg broke off. The enormity of that is unfathomable and as 7/8 of an iceberg is below the surface we cannot see the true size. And because it is so deep in the ocean it floats with the deep sea currents, not necessarily with the surface or wind currents.

At happy hour, I bought the lads a beer and we listened as Jonathan and John gave us updates about today and tomorrow. They answered one question about the international makeup of the people on board:

Stats:

Average age of passengers: 60 and climbing as we had a number of birthdays on board.

Oldest 88 Youngest 22

40 Brits, 36 Yanks, 10 Canadians

27 nationalities in total including crew and then the most populous is Philipinos with 47.

Then we drank Bruce’s bottle of red wine that he bought in Stanley. At dinner John, Bruce and I were joined by a German couple and a couple from Brighton in England. The man was interested in music and we had a good chat about English music, prog and punk.

Tonight, they played the second half of ‘Shackelton’ with Kenneth Branagh. I tried to watch this but gave up as it was Hollywood, romantized, clap trap. It looked fake, the actors made ridiculous speeches and dialogue and most importantly, the men were totally underdressed and seemingly not suffering from the effects of the elements. Rubbish.

Back to the room to do something useful, like update the blog. Then off to bed. As I was lying there I realized I had not got outside once today!