Possession Bay & Crean Glacier - Blog 4

My journal entry vividly reminds me that I awoke in my bunk with the sun shining in my face.  I have never been a worshipper of the sun, beaches, bikinis, tanning or picnicking in order to feel a fulfillment of good spirit or health.  I am a positive person by nature, but this morning’s sun brought a joy that was noteworthy after a week of wind, storms and cloudy darkness at noon.  The Golden Fleece was anchored off Prince Olav Station in Possession Bay and I could not pull on my clothes fast enough and go up on deck.  The sea was calm.  The air was very cold, but with such a sun in a nearly cloudless sky, absent for so long I felt like sitting and taking in the brightness.  The brown, red rusting remains of the decrepit whaling station looked somehow wonderful, even though their history and intent were more fitting of the bleak, cold, sunless and windy days of their past and now abandoned purpose.  Breakfast took me below deck.

I returned to my observation seat after breakfast with a cup of hot tea.  Jerome arrived shortly too.  We all enjoyed this sunny sit down moment.  Jerome talked about the wildlife and that Possession Bay has been devoid of a King Penguin colony and only recently has one been established.  He noted that there were far fewer chicks this year than last…not a good sign.  We had been told that bird flu was infecting the Chinstrap Penguin colonies and for that reason we would avoid them the entire trip so as not to encourage or cause the flu’s spread.  In this case, however, it appeared that starvation was stalking the King colonies of South Georgia!  I remembered my time working with South African Penguins on Robben Island more than a year ago and that the primary problem they were facing was starvation in their competition for food with human needs.

We landed on the beach unopposed, as there were no aggressive, fur seal defenders - still too early in the breeding season - only the Elephant Seals with their newborn and week old pups.  I hiked to the core of the King colony up a stream that drained down the gentle slope on which they seemed to be the most densely gathered.  Normally I would not comment on the number of carcasses of both chicks and adult penguins that lined the way to the colony.  Jerome reiterated his belief that it was lack of the penguin’s preferred food in the sea that was causing all this death.  I continued up to the upper most crèche of brown, puff-toy chicks and sat down to observe.  The sun made my static activity much more pleasant than yesterday’s attempt on Prion Island to sit with the Albatross chicks.  Parent King’s began arriving and vocalizing to locate their chick.  Chicks seemed to become more agitated and frenzied as more and some additional single parents arrived.  I saw feeding, but had no way to measure its quantity or quality.  During the several hours I stayed in place I got the impression that the feeding time was shorter in time between parent and chick than I had seen on other occasions.  I also thought that the chicks seemed pretty subdued as a group and more demanding after the short feed a parent brought them.  I was pre-disposed to think the chicks were being underfeed by what I had seen and Jerome had described on our way here.

I do not comment a lot on the exertion landings and hikes can take.  Riding in a Zodiac can also use up a lot of energy.  But lunch…yes, we got back to the Golden Fleece and had a fine lunch.  The social event of sharing observations or insights of the morning coupled with food and tea or coffee is re-energizing.  We discussed our next destination that would be on the other side of the peninsula and mountains on the southeast side of Possession Bay.  Up came the anchor and we motored out to sea and toward Antarctic Bay and Crean Glacier.  

Crean Glacier, named after Thomas Crean who accompanied Shackleton and Worsley on the trek across the mountains from King Haakon Bay and eventually Stromness Whaling Station, has recently receded rapidly inland and no longer flows into the sea.  The wheelhouse maps showed that this retreat must have been faster than the cartographers have been able to reproduce accurately.  Clearly vast changes are affecting the wildlife, the land, the snow cover, glaciers and food chain in South Georgia and for that matter the whole of earth.  I think my activity as an artist is to record the beauty, the relationships in the environment and the sheer magnificence of this particular short time span in the life of a wilderness, i.e. the Southern Ocean, its islands like South Georgia and portions of Antarctica.

Revisiting South Georgia: Previous Blog : Blog 3 < > Next Blog : Blog 5