Jan 26 - St Andrew’s Bay and Moltke Harbour

We had the good fortune to visit St Andrew's Bay this morning - home to 150,000 breeding pairs of King Penguins. It also has thousands of seals and elephant seals. It is one of the largest and most diverse places of life on South Georgia and maybe in the world. The scale is so large you have trouble grasping it. It was a lovely day - in the 50s - with some clouds which helped with photography and keeping the penguins cool. They are molting right now and that can actually make them overheat so they will go and stand in pools of water or the streams coming down from the glaciers in the mountains above. They have blood vessels in their feet so if they stand in cooler water it will cool down their bodies.

As we walked toward the penguin rookery we encountered a bunch of young seals who enjoyed charging us. They won't hurt you but they can be aggressive in order to protect any piece of ground they have claimed. You see the same behavior in the elephant seals Burt those monsters are 1000 pounds and 20 feet long - when they get angry they can move unbelievably fast. With the smaller seals you just have to clap your hands and wave your walking stick and they will usually back down.

The King penguins are hatching their young right now so you can see hundreds of them standing with their feet slightly up in the air as they support their single egg between their feet and their bodies,. You can't see the egg but you can see the pose of the penguin so you know they are holding an egg. We could not get very close to the King penguins here but we did the next day when we saw chicks and eggs.

We walked across strong glacial stream and had to hold each others arms in order not to get swept off our feet. It was a battle but we made it across. We continued walking to a high point where we could look down on the tens of thousands of pairs loudly swuawking out to their mate so that they can swap their egg from male to female and back. Penguins share keeping the egg warm until it hatches and both bring back food in their bellies to feed it. The chick sticks its beak into the parent's mouth and then eats the food regurgitated but the parent. The chick grows quickly and in 4-5 months it can reach the size of its parents. The parents leave the chick alone thru the winter here at the Bay and the chick lives off the fat it stored as it was growing so fast. It can't go into the ocean to feed until it is roughly 10-12 months old.

Some of the huge chicks we saw were mostly brown and were molting to get rid of their childhood feathers and push out a clean coat that allows them to enter the ocean to feed. If their coat doesn't grow well and full they will lose too much body heat and die. Survival here is tough with mortality rates approaching 80 percent when the weather is tough and the feeding is poor. The other interesting thing is that the King penguin really only has an egg roughly every two years. The cycle from egg to chick to grown fledgling is longer than 23 months so a pair may not have another egg for 2 years. King penguins mate for the full season but not for life. Every two years they can find a different partner to start the cycle again.

Other penguin species do have a one year cycle so can reproduce quicker than the Kings. Life here is not easy but with the large amount of food available the colonies continue to grow. As the whale populations also grow there will be pressure on the krill which are the small crustaceans that form the basis of the entire food chain.

It was interesting that the seal hunting started earlier than the whale hunting here in South Georgia. As the seals declined to a point where it didn't make sense to hunt them then the whales became the most hunted animal. As the whales were hunted almost to extinction then the seal populations came back strongly. Since both are now protected the balance of nature will have to work out the right numbers for each species.

We had a wonderful visit to St Andrew's bay and we went away in awe of the amount of life here in these islands. Hopefully we can continue to help keep the hunters at bay so these beautiful creatures can return to their natural numbers

In the afternoon we headed for Moltke Harbour which was fairly close. The ship can do 12 knots but when you are close to shore it goes a lot slower. We did a zodiac landing that went smoothly and we quickly headed out across the beach to count up to the penguin rookery. These were Gentoo penguins so a little smaller with only black and white colors and a reddish beak. Their chicks were molting and getting ready to go into the oceans to feed. These penguins have a one year cycle so things happen faster than with the Kings.

There were groups of penguins heading in both directions to/from the sea. Since the chicks are big their parents can go and feed often and return to feed the chicks quickly. They only have a few months to go from egg to ocean for these chicks to survive.

It was a warm afternoon and we had to take off our jackets or we would be getting too warm. Luckily the jackets have straps to carry them like backpacks when they aren't needed. We had to fire a small stream that was running pretty strong and Dianne chose this moment to lose her footing and sit down into the water. Luckily she got up quickly and her knee length much boots and dry pants kept most of the water from penetrating. We were both laughing as we struggled across the stream. We continued the hike up to the rookery and enjoyed watching the hundreds of chicks having a wonderful day. Each was at a different stage of molting but we could see that it would not be too long before they were ready to head out to sea. They will go back and forth for more than a month before they finally leave for their final time. In a few years they will come back to this same beach to start the whole cycle again. About 90 percent of their life is spent in the sea feeding and frolicking and enjoying each day. They have few predators and a lifespan of more than 10 years. Overall not too bad a life.

We headed back to the ship being careful to cross the stream without incident. It had been another wonderful day in South Georgia.