South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands.
Home of the King Penguin, Fur Seal, Albatross and Great Petrel.
The landscape is harsh, high mountains topped with snow and circled by glaciers that drop ice bergs into the sea. Stony beaches and river beds covered in guano, scraps of kelp and sea lettuce. Green patches of tussac grassland (Parodiochla fabellata) dot the foreshore providing shelter.
Home of the Elephant Seal, Chinstrap Penguins, South Georgian Pipit.
Only accessible by sea, this little Island paradise is a haven for wildlife. Over 6 million seals of 4 different varieties and 65 million nesting birds of 30 different varieties. The whaling past that scars the landscape, is slowly being swallowed back into ground and sea.
Ice berg alley & shag rock
Leaving South Georgia we passed through ice-berg alley. The largest iceberg we cruised past was D28A, 30kms in length, taller than our ship, a solid wall in the middle of the sea. Surrounded by beautiful large ice burgs many with pieces of jade burg through them.
D28A was once part of D28, the largest ice-berg ever. Estimated to weigh 315 billion tonnes and bigger than 1636 kms squared when she was calved!!!! (Big baby).
After leaving the ice-bergs behind we passed ‘Shag Rock’ the final outpost of South Georgia. Consisting of several large pieces of random rock that jut out of the ocean in the middle of no-where, ready to catch unaware sailors and ship masters by surprise. Although if the thousands of birds squawking had not woken you up about 3 nautical miles before reaching the rocks then you would not be a very good sailor, so you probably deserve to run into it.
The reason so many birds are attracted to Shag Rocks is because the Antarctic convergence runs past these rocks. This is were the sub Antarctic and Antarctic waters meet and huge amounts of krill, fish and other food sources can be found. As well as thousands of cormorants, there was also a pod of Orcas, Blue Whales and a Fin Whale cruising around the rocks feeding.
