Thursday, 17 January 2008
I was woken at about7:00 this morning with an announcement that there was an Emperor Penguin. They are not seen very often as they are now out to sea feeding. We came up on Paulette island where there is a large colony of adele Penguins. Because of the ice, the captain deemed it unsafe to land. They did take out the zodiacs for a ride along the beach. A lot of the adult birds were not on land as the chicks were in crèche. This is when the chicks are big enough to huddle together and the adults go out and hunt. The zodiac ride was great.
Shortly before lunch, an announcement was made that there were killer whales off the port bow. I tried to get some pictures, but I don’t know how good they are. When lunch was announced, in hopes of faster transmission, I updated my blog with my logs from earlier in the week. After lunch, there was a lecture on using the kyaks. I’m not sure that I want to try owing to my poor balance. Anther lecture followed on research that is being conducted on the decreasing adelie penguin population. Now is the time for me to go on deck and relax.
I elected not to go out for a kyak ride and instead went for the zodiac ride. The subject of discussion was principally different types of ice. We did see some adelie penguins and probably three types of seals; namely, the Weddel, Leopard and crab-eater. It was colder than yesterday and sitting in the zodiac, I definitely needed my three layers of clothes.
It’s already 6:00 pm and it is as light as noon in New York.
There were some short lectures before dinner which I found interesting. Dinner proved to be another social event. I usually sit with different people at meals and so far everyone is quite pleasant.
I tried to stay up until midnight when the sun sets although is never gets so dark that you can’t read, but I couldn’t quite make it. I shot a few sunset pictures at 11:00 PM.
By the way, Linblad posts daily reports on the web site - www.expeditions.com
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