We end our trip with images and a few words

Upland Goose family in Carcass Island, Falklands

Leopard Beach, Carcass I., Falklands

Tussock landscape, Falklands

King Penguins, Fortuna Bay, South Georgia 

King Penguin chick

Elephant Seal bull, Grytviken, South Georgia

Grytviken

Scurvy Grass, Falklands

Imperial Cormorant and Rockhopper, New Island, Falklands

Turkey Vulture, Falklands

Sea ice and growlers in the Gerlache

Polarcirkel boat cruising in Andavord Bay

Gentoo Penguin rookery at Videla Station, Paradise Bay

Chinstrap Penguin at Half Moon Island 

Glacier front at Port Lockroy

 Isabelline Gentoo Penguin and mate at Videla Station

Light-mantled Sooty Albatross

Ghost of the sea- the white form of the Southern Giant Petrel

Our constant companion- the Cape Petrel

A second message from our trainee Andrea

Well, my first trip on board MV Fram will be finished soon and I’m really glad that I will be able to visit Antarctica three times more (I will stay on board for four trips, until 4 January 2012). I have not seen enough of Antarctica. My first landing was on Half Moon Island. It’s just a small island, but this island was enough to impress me. With the polarcirkel-boats we arrived at a stoney beach and behind this, a snowy hill full with Gentoo Penguins. Some of them were directly on the beach, relaxing after swimming in the sea or cleaning themselves. To be honest, for me the landscape could have been also somewhere in the Alps: the hills and the snow. The only thing that would be missing were the penguins and the beach. But when the tripcoordinator welcomed the passengers as they landed with “Welcome to Antarctica!”, I realized where I was! I’m really here in the Antarctica. I’m one of the relatively few people in the world who has seen this amazing place in the world. It’s amazing when you are standing between all these penguins and those thoughts are running through your mind. At about 8 o’clock in the evening we were back on Board and the Expedition team asked me how my first landing in Antarctica was. I only said: “Too short!” after which they were all laughing.


The next day we went ice cruising and it was an incredible morning, because the part with the polarcirkel-boats, which bring us to the different landings is one of my favorite parts of this trip :D I saw icebergs, which were so deep in the water, that the reflection in the water was crystal-blue. Nobody can imagine this, without having seen it. In the afternoon we landed at a Chilean research station with the name Gabriel Gonzalez Videla. It was amazing! there were a few houses standing in the middle of nowhere and between them, lived the Gentoo Penguins. When the first passengers landed, we recognized that we put the red flags, which show the passengers where to go and where not, in the middle of a penguin-highway. As a result of this my duty from there on was to stop the “human traffic” when penguins wanted to pass to the other side of the colony. I felt like a traffic policewoman: “Green for the penguins, red for the humans!” Great! In the late evening we loaded goods into the polarcirkel boats and because of this I felt all the muscles in my body for the whole next day. It’s hard work here =)


In the morning we landed finally in Port Lockroy and there 5 people living for one season next to the penguin at the base. It’s so unbelievable… There was a Museum and a gift-shop; can you imagine something like this? I mean a giftshop in Antarctica where roughly nobody lives, the only guests are the passengers, who come with ships down there. The stay there was also much to short, but I know that I will return. At the moment we are in the Drake-Passage going straight to Ushuaia. We have already seen a few Orcas here, which was so amazing. The time passed so fast, but although I’m a little bit sad that it’s over I’m looking forward for the next three trips with the great Expedition team. I’m really glad to be a part of the team on board MV Fram. Here we all are!

Our last day in Antarctica :(

During the night the weather changed and we had stronger winds and a little bit of rough sea. However, we spent the night at anchor in Port Lockroy so the ship was stable and we had a quiet night In the early morning the lucky campers, who had gone out the night before to Dorian Bay, returned from their camp site. They had a wonderful night under the Antarctic sky with a beautiful sunset and sunrise, like two pieces of bread in nocturnal sandwich! We suspect the excitement of it all prevented any amount of sleep, but who cares about sleep when you are experiencing a once in a lifetime event such as this! Even the short but very wet Polarcircel boat ride back to the ship did not dampen their high spirits.

At 09.00am we started our landing in Port Lockroy. We visited the museum in the buildings of the former British Antarctic Station Base A. The museum shows exactly what is was like to live in an early Antarctic station. Today you can find a fantastic gift shop inside the main building as well as Her Majesty’s Post Office. The girls in the shop did a brisk trade as most of us bought remembraces of Antarctica or mailed letters and postcards. The area surrounding Base A is home to breeding Gentoo Penguins. The snow from last winter had already melted in many places allowing many to build their nests and lay their eggs.

Around lunchtime everybody was back on board and we sailed north again, through the Neumeyer Channel and Brabant Strait to the Drake Passage. And make no mistake, this was a real Drake Passage, with very strong winds and big waves! This is all part of the Antarctic Experience!

Mainland Antarctica

Through the night we sailed across the Bransfield Strait towards the Antarctic Peninsula. It was a quiet night on the ship which told us there was little wind outside- a rare thing for Antarctica! In the morning we found ourselves in the Gerlache Straight with the Antarctic mainland to our port side. The scenery and light were spectacular with mountains on all sides of us seemingly covered in white meringue!


Around 0700 we encountered some sea ice in the Gerlache. Even though our ship- the Fram- has an ice strengthened hull, our Captain does not want to hit any ice if he can avoid it. The result is we go dead slow through ice and navigate around it if at all possible.

Our planned landing at Neko Harbour was not possible due to heavy pack-ice in area. “Plan B” was to launch our Polarcirkel boats and cruise around the ice and icebergs near the ship. This was fantastic fun! Being in one of the small boats, near the water’s surface really gives a sense being in a world of ice- the icy tingle on your face, the fresh, cool smell, the south of ice cracking and bits hitting each other and popping like corn. On one small iceberg, a Crabeater Seal had hauled out and seemed to be enjoying the day as much as we were!

We returned to the ship after our boat cruises for lunch, as the Fram sailed to our next destination of Paradise Bay. Our landing there was to be at Almirante Brown, on the mainland of Antarctica, but the pack-ice was pushed against the landing site and stopped us in our tracks. Again, our expedition leader Karin had an ace up her sleeve and we headed for the nearby Chilean station of Gonzalez Videla. We were in luck and the landing site was clear of ice so we went ashore! 

The station was not yet manned for the season, but the penguins and fantastic scenery entertained and enchanted us.

Taken together, we all would agree that this day was fantastic, not what we had originally planned, but fantastic nevertheless!

Antarctica ho!

This was our final half-day at sea before reaching Antarctica. Conditions were generally foggy and the sea lopped back and forth. As predicted yesterday, bird life increased around the ship as we approached Antarctica, and at one stage at lunch we had Cape, Antarctic, Southern Giant and Snow Petrels, and Southern Fulmars following us. Every now and then we caught a glimpse of King George Island through the mist and as this happened, our sense of anticipation heightened.

After lectures and briefings in the morning, we reached Half Moon Island in the mid-afternoon; this was to be our first Antarctic landing. Half Moon is a crescent-shaped island 1.25 mi long, lying in the entrance to Moon Bay on the east side of Livingston Island, in the South Shetland Islands. This island was known to sealers in the area as early as 1821.


This scenic island is the site of a Chinstrap Penguin colony but is also home to breeding Wilson’s Storm-Petrels, Antarctic Terns, Kelp Gulls and Snowy Sheathbills. Our main focus was the penguins and we had great conditions for photography, and for studying the breeding behaviour of the Chinstraps- and there's a lot of it at this time of year! The light was bright but indirect because of the clouds, and a light snow fell for most of the landing. Towards the end of our stay, the air cleared and we could see the imposing mountains of Livingston Island to the west.

We returned to the ship to a wonderful Chilean buffet and later in the evening we were treated to a sail through Neptune’s Bellows into the flooded caldera of Deception Island, an active volcano! The light was fading but this did not deter our many intrepid photographers!

Always something happening on board a ship

Even if it’s quiet outside like today, there’s always something happening on a ship. We are sailing in the Scotia Sea towards the Antarctic Peninsula and still moving over deep, relatively unproductive waters. As a result the birds were “thin on the ground” although numbers picked up in the late afternoon.

We are now getting used to living on a ship, the rhythm of movement, the strange sounds, and we are getting to know each other. Our lecture program continued unabated- all of the presented information designed to help us get the most out of our Antarctic experience.

It is safety first on the Fram and today our crew had a safety drill which involved a simulated problem on the ship and an eventual evacuation. Practice makes perfect! During the drill all the cabin doors are marked to indicate that they have been checked and no one is inside.

Later in the afternoon, the eagerly anticipated Norwegian waffles were grilling up on deck 7 in the Panorama Lounge, under the watchful and expert eye of barman extraordinaire Dennis. Dennis is multi-talented, and as you can see here he can literally be in two places at once. In this case he is pouring some waffle batter and at the same time preparing to make a macchiato from the espresso machine.

The waffles smothered in blueberry jam and cream were scrumptious.

After our wonderful dinner, we met our Captain, Chief Engineer, and Hotel Manager for a question and answer session in the Panorama Lounge. This was a chance to ask any question we liked about the Fram and running a modern ship.

Our first icebergs

As we sail southwest in the Scotia Sea from South Georgia to Antarctica, the air is developing that tingling cold you associate with polar regions. The cold sea gently rolled today in the aftermath of the storm we experienced yesterday.

The water we sailed over today was deep and deep water is relatively unproductive because of low nutrient levels at the surface where the light is. The seabirds told us these waters were unproductive by their relative absence. We had a few of the ever-present Cape Petrels with us all day and the odd Giant Petrel and Black-brown Albatross- nothing like the abundance of seabirds we had yesterday off South Georgia.

And now to the main topic of the blog- icebergs. They are an iconic symbol of polar regions and we saw our first good-sized ones today. In Antarctica, they come in several types- the one we saw today was tabular which means “like a table”. 

Tabular icebergs originate from ice shelves. Ice shelves are portions of the Antarctic ice cap that flow down and over embayments. The ice is supported by the water and the adjoining land, and remains intact. However, pieces often break off due to tidal action, which moves the shelf up and down. Contrast this with icebergs that calf from a glacial front- they break off erratically and produce almost randomly-shaped chunks of ice.

There is a lot of interest in climate change in the Antarctic, which shows itself most obviously in the breakup of large parts of ice shelves, which float out to sea and form often huge ice islands. This is happening on the Antarctic Peninsula where warming is taking place at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world. Off the peninsula on the main part of continental Antarctica, the climate is actually cooling a little.

So, we continue out voyage to Antarctica and have one more sea-day before we arrive at the “Last Continent”.

Back in time

Overnight we sailed to Maiviken, South Georgia, with a plan for hikers to walk from there to Grytviken, where we would land for the morning. However, nature got the better of us: small bergy-bits and growlers from the breakup of the nearby glacier filled Maiviken Harbour, and this together with a large swell made landing there impossible. So, some hikers went back to bed for well-earned rest and others enjoyed the amazing skies as we left the bay (note the lenticular clouds in this High Dynamic Range image!).

After breakfast we reached Grytviken and the ship cleared British Customs control. A representative of the South Georgia Heritage Trust then came on board to talk to us about the rat eradication program on-going on the island. Introduced rats are a serious threat to many S. Georgia bird species, not the least of which is the endemic South Georgia Pipit, the most southerly songbird in the world. We all found out how we can contribute to this extremely valuable project by sponsoring a hectare of S. Georgia to be cleared. Here’s the link: Sponsor-a-hectare

Grytviken is famous as the site of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s grave and for the abandoned Norwegian whaling station established in 1904 by Capt. Larsen. The atmosphere in this incredible place is evocative and took us all back in time to days past when we relied on whale products for all sorts of things from fine oils to corset stays and food. The weather was positively 21st century however- balmy with temperatures reaching 16° by noon. No wonder South Georgia’s glaciers are shrinking at an alarming rate due to modern-day climate change.

The wind picked up through the Grytviken landing but were hardly felt it in the sheltered bay that Capt. Larsen picked for his whaling station. However, after we left and headed out into open sea, were were all reminded that the sea was below our ship!

 Next stop Antarctica!

A Fortunate Day

Named by Capt. C.A. Larsen, the Norwegian founder of the whaling industry in the remote island of South Georgia, Fortuna Bay was our first landing of the day. We had sailed for two days from the Falkland Islands and woke up this morning to breath-taking views of the north coast of South Georgia. After an early breakfast the Polarcirkel boats went into the water and transported us across to the beach in front of the Fram. There was a significant swell in the bay which made landing our passengers and getting them back off the beach rather difficult. Nevertheless the trusty expedition staff and the expert boat drivers made the landing happen with aplomb.

Fortuna was spectacular. It is the site of a medium-sized King Penguin rookery and a breeding site for Fur Seals and Elephant Seals. As we walked up the beach towards the penguin rookery we were struck by the smell of the male Fur Seals- believe it or not, a mix of garlic and fried onions! This time of year the fast-moving males are not very aggressive but later on, great care has to be taken around them and we approach to only 50ft.

Our reward at the end of the short hike was the King Penguin colony. Adults and many brown, fat chicks stood together in large groups, vocalizing, interacting with each other and generally enjoying the beautiful sun and relatively calm conditions of the morning. Some chicks were attended by one parent and occasional feedings were witnessed. The chicks were eager to approach us probably in case we were their parents returning with food. Of course they were all disappointed!

After the landing, intrepid hikers were transferred to the other side of the bay to start the Shackelton Walk from Fortuna to Strømness. The hike, in the footsteps of one Antarctica’s most famous explorers, was exhilarating and the summit provided panoramic views of this part of South Georgia. 

As all this was happening the Fram sailed around to Strømness and we started the landing there in the late afternoon. As the sun went down the fur seals, sea lions and King Penguins were lit up with golden light with a backdrop of brilliant greens or surprisingly photogenic rusting metal of the old whaling station there.

We go to bed tonight tired but very satisfied in the knowledge that we visited a unique, remote spot on this planet and left only a few foot prints.