Today was a day of many “firsts,” as we encountered our first iceberg, the first penguins of the expedition, and made a historic first-ever landing on the Antarctic Peninsula for the National Geographic Orion, the newest ship in the Lindblad-National Geographic fleet. This is all after a remarkably smooth crossing of the Drake Passage, the stormiest ocean on Earth. And, to top it all off, we are sailing in the wake of the famous Shackleton Expedition exactly 100 years after the ship Endurance was crushed by the ice in the Weddell Sea, setting up one of the most amazing stories of survival and rescue in the history of exploration.
For everyone on board this would prove to be an epic day indeed. Breakfast had just started when the call came from our expedition leader, Tim Soper, on the Navigation Bridge – “whales ahead of the ship.” We bundled up in record time to see both humpback and fin whales feeding along with groups of chinstrap penguins. Several times the whales and penguins swam right under the bow of the National Geographic Orion.
Back underway, we made final preparations for the expedition with a series of briefings about landings, Zodiac, and kayak operations. As the briefings ended the volcanic South Shetland Islands came into view as we navigated English Strait in the Aitcho Islands., with dramatic spires of columnar basalt protecting this remote archipelago.
After lunch we went ashore at a well-protected bay where chinstrap and gentoo penguins are nesting in crowded and boisterous rookeries. Everybody loves penguins, so it’s hard not to be smiling while observing their antics. Most of the penguins where incubating one or two eggs, but here and there individual penguins had very young chicks only days old. Meanwhile, flying overhead were the predatory Antarctic skuas and kelp gulls on patrol and looking for any opportunity to grab an egg or young chick.
To cap off an already amazing day, after dinner the National Geographic Orion navigated through Neptune’s Bellows into the flooded caldera of an active volcano called Deception Island. Once inside Port Foster we could see the remains of an old whaling station and British scientific station that was covered by ash and debris flows from the most recent eruptions between 1969 and 1972, when the station finally had to be abandoned. Today, scientists monitor the island with seismic instruments hoping to predict the next eruption.
Thankfully, the volcano did not erupt today. As the light faded, the National Geographic Orion sailed safely out of the caldera into open water in search of more adventures.
