South Georgia. Salisbury Plain and Prins Olav Harbour
60.000 pairs. Often over 200.000 individuals hang around. If you want to see King penguins, you can’t miss at least trying to land at Salisbury Plain. Hard to believe the growth of the colony if we check the census estimations of 1912, when the rookery counted with just 350 pairs.
Still, South Georgia is home for an even larger rookery and others of almost comparable size. EUROPA still has a handful more days on the island to do all she can to visit them.
But today is the time for setting foot here at Salisbury, one of the most coveted landingsites on the island.
Its long open and unsheltered beach stretches for about 5km, located in the middle of the large Bay of Isles, that with its 14 km wide indents the coast for 3 miles. Inside, a complex structure of capes, islets, rocks, shallows and coves. In the background, the largest flat area in the island, framed by Lucas and Grace glaciers and the high jagged peaks from where they make their way downhill. In the past reaching the sea level, now with their retreat they left behind this huge outwash plain.
A levelled area, a coast with large surf and breakers, the sort of preferred terrain for the King penguins. But not just for them, thousands of Fur seals and Elephant seals use Salisbury as one of the prime breeding sites in the island. A land and its inhabitants that now are in recovery process since the sealing reached its end in 1964.
It was here too that the full life cycle of the King penguins was finally understood. A species in South Georgia that have a triennial pattern of breeding which takes over a year to fledge a chick.
With high hopes for a visit ashore, we gather on deck, but the quite strong westerly wind blowing along the coast didn’t make for an easy landing. But at least the typical swell crashing against the long sandy beach today doesn’t represent a big deal. Anyway, once the ship lays at anchor and the disembarking operations start, a good eye must be kept at the conditions, keeping the forecasted increase of winds and gusts in mind.
As customary, as soon as something unusual appears at the beach, it quickly attracts the attention of countless Fur seal pups and penguins. Leaving those groups behind, the idea is to slowly walk towards the main penguin colony. A densely packed large crowd, standing shoulder to shoulder, with well established highways of considerable size in both directions, up to the rookery and down to the beach.
The ever-changing weather offers spells of sunlight, intervals of rain and grey. A beautiful rainbow shines for a while framing the scenery. All kinds of light and conditions you can ask for if your thing is photography. Taking a bit of time to stand quiet and observe the workings of such an overwhelming sight, helps to start realising the structure on it. Here are adults with their enlarged bellies over their egg, held atop their feet. A bit further a creche of chicks, on a far side some moulting individuals. Along the highways the usual rush hour traffic.
Above and around them all, Skuas and Giant petrels, always looking for a good hunt or a quality food finding.
Before the wind picks up more and the swell grows, it was time to trace back our steps to the landing site and make our way to the ship. A call on time as not much later we find ourselves rolling and battling with stronger gusts on our way to Prins Olav Harbour.
The afternoon activity ashore wasn’t clear until Captain steered the ship through the shallows and narrows at the entrance of the harbour and felt the gusts that blew over the sea.
It actually doesn’t look too bad for a landing, although it’s gonna be relatively long and gusty ride for the rubber boats, but always worth it.
It is here, just at the entrance of Possession Bay where it is thought that in January 1775 the first human set foot on the island. Captain Cook.
South Georgia had been spotted much earlier, some even say all the way back to 1502 by Amerigo Vespucci, though the first reliable accounts date from 1675 by Antoine de la Roché. But it had to be Cook on board the Resolution during his second voyage of exploration in a quest to find the Southern Continent who landed first. And not just that but he also claimed the island for the British Crown.
The wild rocks raised their summits till they were lost in the clouds, and the valleys lay covered with everlasting snow. There was not a tree to be seen, or a shrub found, that was even big enough to make a toothpick. The only vegetation, that was met with, was a coarse strong-bladed grass growing in tufts, wild burnet, and a plant like moss, which sprang from the rocks.
Andrew Kippis. Narrative of the Voyages Round the World Performed by Captain James Cook. 1788
In a way not much has changed since he described the first impressions these lands made on him. On the other hand, the whale populations have been decimated, the numbers of seabirds have dramatically dropped, many plants have been introduced and now threaten the native flora and the glaciers have massively retreated.
Unbeknown to anyone was the fact that these lands are actually an island, and Cook set the mission to follow its coasts and check if it was connected to the legendary Terra Incognita Australis. Eight days it took for the Resolution to round the south cape and confirm the insularity of the territory. After the disappointment, his quest continued, setting sail again to the unknown in the South Atlantic.
Not much later, when the descriptions of the nature’s bounty of the island reached the ears of sealers eager for new hunting grounds, South Georgia coastline became busy with them. And one of their operational centres was Prins Olav Harbour. They called it differently though, Crows-Nest, or Crow-Harbour, also Rat Harbour, as it was probably one of the first places were rats were introduced. It was renamed at the beginning of the 20th Century when the whalers followed the sealers. In honour of their Crown prince the Norwegian whale hunters called it Prins Olaf-Hafen. They worked here from 1911 to 1931. When the station was definitively abandon, so it was left behind their coal storage hull, the Brutus, which not much later broke off her moorings and ran aground. Nowadays her rusty iron hull is colonised by tussock grass, seals play in the shipwreck and cormorants and seagulls nest on her broken decks.
A high hill at the background of the bay offers unmatched views over the whaling remains, and the shuttle ashore with the zodiacs allow for a good look at the Brutus. Down at the rocky beach hop around a couple of the only songbird species on the island, the endemic South Georgia Pipits. It is truly remarkable how these species made the island their home, surrounded by the cold waters of the Polar Front, about 1200nm from Falkland Islands and 800nm from Cape Horn. During the last years, and thanks to the South Georgia Heritage Trust efforts on the Habitat Restoration, their numbers increased, after the eradication of rats.
