Dermot Breen's Blog: Antarctica 26th December 2019

Tuesday, 10 March 2020

Antarctica 26th December 2019

Today we arrived in Antarctic. Our first land sighted was Elephant Island which was mostly covered in fog when we arrived initially, but it eventually cleared up a little. Elephant Island features large in the story of Shackleton's failed 1916 expedition to the South Pole. Most of his crew spent the winter on this desolate island after the ship was lost to ice while Shackleton sailed to South Georgia 1,253km away! Incredibly all the crew survived and were rescued. There was not unsurprisingly a noticeable drop in temperature, but it wasn't too extreme. Some of the icebergs were huge and that was just the visible parts above the surface. Due to the size of the ship we would not be landing anywhere on the Antarctic. This was probably best as I certainly wouldn't like to see hordes of tourists tramping around such a pristine environment. With average age of clients on ship probably being in the 70's, I think many would be suited for the terrain onshore either. We would also do a quick sail-by Gibbs Island later in the day. The number of bird species was understandably much lower down here. Over the course of about four days my Antarctic list stood at twenty-two species.

https://ebird.org/checklist/S62648145
https://ebird.org/checklist/S62640734
https://ebird.org/checklist/S62785476
https://ebird.org/checklist/S62689710