April 15 - Exploring the Islands Around Palmer

Ok.. should I talk about the Adelie Penguins or the fur seals, or the nesting Giant Petrels? Yep, saw all of this and more on our boating trip today.

Tuesday is an off-day for the crew working at Palmer and this is the day when most of the recreation happens. This includes, hikes up the glacier, boating trips around Palmer, skiing (when there is enough snow) or movie marathons.

I had put up my name on the board to let then know that I was interested in going out boating and I got called at 12:30 that a boat would be leaving at around 1 PM and I should pack up all my gear (extra clothes, some food, water etc) and be ready. We were about 8 people and we headed out around 1:30 PM. Below are some of the interesting sights of this trip.

Tying up the Zodiac on Janus Island

The above pictures are of Adelie penguins on Janus Island. We found only about 6 penguins there whereas just a few days ago we had seen a few thousand on this island.  Looks like they had all gone feeding.

 

Found a bunch of fur seals on Janus island. This one below was quite cantankerous. Barked and snorted at us even when were a good 50 fee away. Its great to have a zoom lens for such situations. You see details in the picture that you miss with the naked eye.

Aftre Janus we headed northt towards Loudwater Cove. There was  beautiful iceberg there that people wanted to see and also great views of the glacier on Amsler Island. Within Loudwater Cove was this tiny outcrop that we decided to land on just to get a better view of the glacier and were were presently surprised at what we found on this little outcrop. Giant Petrel nest!

We were careful to stay far away from them and tool these with a zoom. The chicks are massive, almost the size of the adults. There were two nests with two chicks each.

Heading towards old Palmer Station, we found this Crabeater seal camping out on a little iceberg. It had obviously had a a lot to eat; it was drooling pieces of krill and was in a deep slumber.
Hardly opened its eyes to look at us.

Headed towards Old Palmer (this is where the first Palmer station was established and operated till till the 1950s)  and that is where we found something amazing -- but my camera ran out of juice! So will have to write about that in the next post once I get some pictures from some of the other people who were with me.

Little map of our boating expedition.