February 10 - On the way to South Georgia

Today is the first of two days that we’ll be sailing through the Scotia Sea on our way to South Georgia.  We aren’t experiencing large wave action at the moment but all day we’ve been having significant rolling.  It has made things like walking with a plate of food at breakfast or lunch challenging.

This morning we all had to go for a briefing on protocols to go ashore on South Georgia.  I had read about this in the past but was reminded of it during the talk.  South Georgia is one of the richest places on Earth for many of the animal species that are found in this part of the hemisphere. Penguins are there by the hundreds of thousands all year round, as well as fur seals, elephant seals, and many sea birds. There are as many as 400,000 mating pairs of king penguins.  It’s a favorite mating place for the albatross.

Until the 1960’s no one was really paying much attention to the potential introduction of non-native species of plants and animals and had that continued it could have been catastrophic.  For example, rats and mice that came aboard ships like whaling ones were beginning to overrun South Georgia and other nearby islands.  Those rodents were threatening the bird populations, raiding the nests and going after chicks.  People started paying attention and fortunately the invaders have been virtually eradicated.  So, before we can land on the island on the 12th (weather permitting), officials will come aboard with sniffer dogs to examine the ship, and as we passengers board the zodiacs we’ll be inspected.  It’s more than most of us need to know, but I found it interesting so here it is.  The GSGSS, that’s the Government of South Georgia and South Sandwich, uses a 100 point scale.  For each seed or speck of mud that’s detected on any of us, one point is deducted.  If we get dinged 21 points, the ship and all of us on the Quest will be ordered to leave and go float around someplace else.

Aside from that around lunch time we began sailing through an area of large icebergs.  We were playing trivia so it wasn’t possible to get any good photos, but we sailed past one that the captain told us was more than one mile long.  It was a tabular iceberg, so from our viewpoint it looked perfectly flat.  During lunch we went through more bergs and growler ice patches.  The sky was partly cloudy.  It’s a couple of hours later and we’re now in an area of dense fog.  As a result the captain is sounding the fog horn every couple of minutes.  I would also imagine that the watch has been doubled to keep an eye out for any bergs in our path.

Not a good photo but the best any of us could do from our place inside. That white thing through the window is the big berg we sailed past.

I saw this one from my veranda just as I was getting ready to go to dinner and I liked the way the sun was shining on it.