I want to share some more of my favorite photos of the wildlife in Antarctica. I think most of these photos are by my friend Clif, see my previous post on his incredible Instagram photos! I plan to go into more detail about each species like I did in my post about Pinnipeds but for now I just wanted to get my favorite images up before too much time goes by.
An amzing action shot of a whale about to dive. Photo by Clif Hagstrom
Gorgeous shot of a Petrel gliding through the air with a blue ice wall in the backgroun. Photo by Clif Hagstrom.
Incredible photo of a whale fluke as it dives into Wilhelmina Bay. Photo by Clif Hagstrom
Another incredible shot of the Petrel in front of a giant wall of blue ice. Photo by Clif Hagstrom
I love this shot of two Gentoo Penguins and what I believe is a Snowy Sheathbill. I'm not sure who took this photo.
Chinstrap Penguins marching across a rock. Photo by Clif Hagstrom
A Snowy Sheathbill taking a stroll. Not sure who took this one either!
Another great whale shot. Also not sure who took this, but most likely Clif!
Penguins porpoising through the water.
I love this photo of penguins doing a little bow; and I'm proud to say I took this one!
A fluffy little penguin!
Another favorite that I'm sure Clif took.
This Fur Seal looks so cute and reminded me of my dogs a little bit.
Pinnepeds, or seals, were unexpectedly a large part of the trip. Actually, everything on this trip was unexpected. If I remember correctly there are over 20 species of seals in the world. We spotted several types of seals throughout the trip:
Admittedly I had a tough time identifying the differences between some of the seals we saw while kayaking or while on land, but I will certainly always be able to identify the Southern Elephant Seal and the Leopard Seal as we had particularly memorable experiences with both! Clearly I was not paying close enough attention during our seal class but hopefully I'll correctly identify the seals in the photos we took during the trip. I plan to do a couple more posts on seals to get into more detail about some of our experiences. For now here is some GoPro footage and some photos taken by me and others.
Some GoPro footage of our encounters with seals:
A short clip of a seal sneaking under my kayak. This took place on our first excursion- I was so thankful to have had the GoPro strapped to my head so I could capture this!
I think this is a Fur Seal that was particularly sassy at Deceptions Island. I have several clips of this particular seal chasing after passengers. The worst thing you can do when a seal is chasing you is to run and we all seemed to forget this outside of the classroom.
The Leopard Seal poking our kayaks. We had no idea this happened until the last day of the trip when the staff put together their own GoPro footage.
We witnessed a Leopard Seal catch and kill a penguin on a morning excursion. It took place within a few feet of our kayaks and zodiacs. It was difficult to watch the penguin go, but it was one of those things that makes you realize how amazing nature is.
This is a male Southern Elephant Seal that seriously seemed to stare into my soul. I don't think I took this closeup shot, but I'll be posting more on the day we encountered a pile of about 50 male Elephant Seals in a mud bath pile-up that typically takes place during molting.
A seal resting on a small iceberg. I can't remember if I took this from my kayak or from the ship.
Another seal perched on an iceberg. I think this is a Fur Seal and I'm sure it's fairly obvious to someone else- hopefully someone from the trip will help me out here : )
A Leopard Seal captured by another passenger.
Another great photo captured by someone else on the trip. This is, I believe, a Crabeater Seal who appears to have just finished a meal.
A Weddell Seal appears to be posing as we cruised by on the zodiacs and kayaks. Another passenger captured this photo.
This is a sassy Fur Seal we encountered at Deception Island. Photo also captured by another passenger.
I think this is an Elephant Seal calf we spotted on the beach at Hannah Point.
I didn't expect to fall in love with ice on my trip to Antarctica, but I did. I am completely obsessed with ice, icebergs and bergy bits now. One of the most beautiful surprises of the trip was seeing blue ice. Blue ice is hidden deep within glacier crevasses or is just floating around on and under smaller icebergs.
Why does ice turn blue? When snow falls on a glacier it eventually gets compressed as it moves towards water. While the snow is compressing and moving with the glacier, any air bubbles trapped in the ice are slowly squeezed out of the ice eventually making it clear. The ice looks blue for the same reason that the water looks blue- the result of oxygen and hydrogen bonds that absorb certain light colors and reflect only blue. If you'd like to read more check out wikipedia for a quick lesson.
Here are some of the photos I took of blue (and blue-green) ice!
This is an unedited photo I took when we were cruising through the Lemaire Channel. This smaller iceberg is almost completely blue and really stood out against the glassy water.
A seal resting on some glacier ice extending out from land. The blue green water below it shows the outline of how far the ice extends below the surface.
Close up of the blue crevasses in an iceberg like the one below.
This shows the deep blue crevasses in the glacier wall as well as some blueish icebergs floating in the water.
The color of the water above the iceberg below the surface reminded me of tropical waters.
Those tiny dots are penguins hanging out on the iceberg.
And here are some photos taken by other passengers:
This was one of my favorite penguins- look how shiny and clean he is! This photo was taken with my GoPro as a much larger still- the quality of photos from GoPro was really surprising as I was able to crop and zoom in quite a bit without loosing any definition.
A closeup up the marching gentoo penguins.
I was crouching behind some rocks on the beach to take some better photos of the marching penguins.
Two penguins guarding their nest that was meticulously built with rocks and some twigs.
I took some GoPro footage of the penguins at Hannah Point. Here a a couple of my favorites.
In the clip above, penguins are building their nests out of rocks. Penguins are unfortunately not that bright. They often steal rocks from other penguin nests- but while they're out collecting (or stealing rocks) they are also becoming victims of theft. If you stand and watch long enough, you can see one rock stolen and passed around in a circle- essentially whichever penguin is closes to the external rocks is doing all the work while the rest just steal and pass around the same rocks unknowingly.
This is a clip of some penguins marching along the black sand beach. We were hiking on the lower part of a mountain while this was filmed.
A Gentoo (right) and several Chinstrap penguins (left).
A thirsty Chinstrap penguin eating some snow for hydration.
