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Tuesday, February 9, 2010- Antarctica |
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Tuesday, 09 February 2010 08:16 |
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We awoke to another glorious day with blue skies and sunshine. Our shore landing today was at Pleneau Island where we mingled among a colony of Gentoo penguins. They were everywhere - so many penguins we had to be carefully not to step on them! We were fortunate to see an elephant seal and her pup sleeping on a large rock amidst the penguins - apparently this is a rare sight. The weather was so lovely this morning that we had 2 brave souls take a swim in the waters - no one from our group. The reast of us were shedding some of our outer layers as we basked in the sun's rays.
This afternoon was a different story The seas became rougher as we continued our journey north. We arrived at Palmer Station around 3:00pm. This is the American station on Anvers Island where Heidi Geisz (our guest speaker at HRIMS two weeks ago)has spent ten seasons as a researcher. We had a tour of the station and learned a great deal about the research that is taking place at this facility.
Back on ship we ended the evening with a most interesting talk from our expedition leader, Meghan about living and working in Antarctica. Meghan has devoted a great deal of her life to studying Adelie penguins. Life is hard in this part of the world, especially in the winter and not for the faint of heart!!
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