Strike a pose
Today we travelled to Desolation Island and Half Moon Island. At Desolation Island we were greeted by several friendly chinstrap penguins waving us in to shore. They don’t get many visitors and wanted to say hi! If they could speak I think they would have said “Elephant seal yoga commences shortly by the whale bones, and there is a pre class Sea Lion scrum you can join to warm yourself up, you can’t miss that group!” We definitely couldn’t! A scrum is the only way I can explain this comical pile of sea lions. Possibly a hairy, hungover scrum, reminiscent of more than one occasion of a big night out. Whilst they were rollingand groaning over each other, in the distance there was a grey figure bounding out of the water, possibly thirty metres away. This friendly figure was an elephant seal. He must of heard about the party through fur seal radio and decided to join. He happily bounded about five metres at a time until he reached the edge of the scrum. A few groans came from the pile of brown fur, but no attacks. “Good news, they must like me” he must have thought, and jumped in the squirming fur pile, one grey mass in a scrum of brown fur. The fur seals were watching us with interest, one immediately went into Madonna mode, and was striking a pose in every which way. As this island is not regularly visited I think we were met with intrigue.
I also saw a Skua for the first time. For the record, I think it needs to be renamed to the Antarctic Bush Chook. It’s just as big and burly as the regular Sydney Bush Chook, Skua doesn’t quite capture the burliness. In the evening we went to Half Moon Island. It doesn’t really get dark till about 11/12pm so we had plenty of daylight. Again greeted by a large group of chin strap penguins, I think they were a little blase about our visit though as they see people all the time. There were two Macaroni penguins on the entire island, quite odd, but also felt like they had some sort of exalted status.
As we went around the corner of the island we could see a mass gathering of penguins on a high rock. It felt like an official ceremony, with a fur seal at the door to make sure the right attendees were getting through. It was quite lively up there, like they were waiting for someone to kick off official proceedings. If anything I think perhaps they were waiting on the Macaroni penguins as the official master of ceremonies. When we climbed to the top of the adjacent rock we could see hundreds of chinstrap penguins. A large amount of the adults had their heads to the sky singing whilst cuddling their chicks. It was like they
were serenading the last hours of daylight. When an albatross flew over, they all went silent, not out of fear I don’t think, but rather respect. Tomorrow the plan is to head to Fort Point, and Hannah Point. I’m not sure what time the Elephant seal yoga starts, and whether we have an invite but looking forward to what tomorrow brings.