Damoy Point and Port Lockroy

 Friday...January 22, 2016
                          Damoy Point and Port Lockroy, Antarctica


“If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it.” 
                                                                                                                                                         ― Andrew Denton

  It snowed last night 

                                                                          

 and the conditions were not conducive for us to land this morning at Damoy Point. 

                                           So they lowered the zodiacs 

                       and we started out on another day's Antarctic adventure!

      

                Once again, we were stunned with the enormity of the icebergs.

    

A gentoo penguin colony of approximately 1,600 breeding pairs can be found nearby, between Damoy Point and Dorian Bay. 

                         There were also quite a few Adelie penguins on ice flows. 

                         

 Crabeater seals were also on ice flows and icebergs at nearly every turn!

  Our marine mammal naturalist told us that the scars on the crabeater seals are from young leopard seals.

                              We got up close up and personal with this crabeater seal.

           

      

 As we were headed back to the ship,

we passed an ice-sheet that had Emperor penguins! One was done molting and the other two were nearly done. Such a wonderful way to end our morning zodiac trip.

                                                Back to board the ship for lunch.

In the early afternoon we hopped in our zodiacs and headed to Port Lockroy. 



                                 These "porpoising" penguins led the way.

                      No more than 100 people are permitted to land at one time.



                               

                                     We landed at Jougla Point at British Base A.

 Here's the view from inside BAS looking out at the of the Gentoo penguins.

 British Base A is home to the restored British Antarctic Survey (BAS) The BAS hut was occupied between 1944 and 1962. It was restored in 1996. 

We felt we were in a time machine back to the late 1950s, complete with a Marilyn Monroe mural. 

     The Port Lockroy Post Office is the southernmost general post office in the world. We mailed postcards and were told it might take six months for them to be received. We were told "for sure before Christmas."

               Here are some of the gentoo penguins nesting and roaming around Port Lockroy.

                          

 Lots of lovely Gentoo penguins! The gentoo penguin colony at this site is part of a long-term study monitoring the impact of tourist activities on penguins.

      Jougla Point, Wiencke Island, is a rocky peninsula indented with small coves and a raised beach. Gentoo penguins, kelp gulls, Antarctic cormorants and skuas breed on the island among rounded boulders and rocks. The Alice Creek shoreline is strewn with whalebones.

  

The gentoo chicks had hatched a month earlier and the adults were busy feeding their hungry mouths.

         Time to say goodbye to Port Lockroy and head back to the ship.