Day Two - Petermann Island

 

 Day two we arrived at Petermann Island.  This photo is of the beautiful sunset as our ship sailed the Lemaire Channel.  I will be adding more photos of this day's activities and a lot of shots of wildlife.  The days here are quite busy and it is difficult to find time to sort, process and upload photos to this blog.  Let me give you a typical day's schedule:

The day begins early with breakfast about 8 AM.  By 9:30 AM it's time to dress for the morning excursion.  It requires about 40 minutes to put on 3-layers before the final outer layer.  Then the Arctic boots are added.  With all this gear, we waddle like penguins to the zodiac for our 90 minute excursion.  Returning, we strip for lunch, and then begin the redressing process again for an afternoon excursion.  Finally by 5 PM we can dress down for dinner, eat and then collapse.  Most days I'm too tired to process photos for the blog, thus they are usually a couple of days late. Tonight I hope to uploade some great whale, seal and penguin photos.

Our zodiac was only a short distance from the Octantus when we came across a raft of gentoo penguins in the water.  They are very efficient swimmers and leap out of the water like porpoises as they move.  They can swim 22 miles per hour and dive up to 600 feet.  Their speed is their only defense against leopard seals and killer whales.

Near Petermann Island gentoo penguins began to appear.  It is late in the southern summer and many have already began their migration north for the winter.

The penguins still here are young birds that have not completed their moulting. This is the process where they lose all their "baby" feathers and cannot swim until their new feathers have grown, a process that takes a couple of weeks.

Icebergs are everywhere.

Three humpback whales decided to play with the Zodiacs.  Because of their size, they could have easily overturned our rubber boats, but they were probably only curious about us.

 

One of the whales stuck its head above the surface for a look around.

Later we found a juvenile leopard seal sunning itself on an ice flow.  This one was about 6' long.  Male's can grow to about 11' in length and weigh about 660 pounds.

Then we spotted a mature male leopard seal nearby.