Paulet Island & Brown Bluff
The National Geographic Explorer continued its exploration of the Weddell Sea this fine morning by visiting impressive Paulet Island. Our captain anchored so close to our landing that we could almost step ashore.
At this time of year, Paulet Island is a very busy place. Close to 100,000 pairs of Adelie penguins and a large colony of blue-eyed shags nest there. Also, skuas, giant petrels, snowy sheathbills, and kelp gulls were in attendance at the fringes of the colonies. Aside from its teeming natural history, Paulet Island is the site of a forced-over wintering by 18 men when Captain Larsen’s ship, the Antarctic, was beset and crushed by pack ice in 1903. We were able to visit the makeshift hut of stacked stones in which all but one sailor survived that terrible winter. We also explored the shore by Zodiac where we were able to see the full extent of this massive Adelie colony.
During lunch, our ship took us westward around the tip of the Trinity Peninsula to make our first landing on the actual continent itself…Brown Bluff. In spite of a panorama of spectacular ice bergs, glaciers, and thousand-foot vertical rock cliffs, this afternoon was all about the weather. Those hikers that followed Mike up along the edge of the nearby tidewater glacier were soon shedding layers of polar clothing as they made their way up to a lookout. Others were content to sit on the beach in the warm afternoon sun and watch the lazy ebb and flow of the penguin tide as the adult birds brought food to their young and returned to the sea again.
It is days like this that live in our memories and keep us returning to this magical place time and again.
