When we woke up this morning we had crossed the Gerlache Strait and were moored outside of Port Lockroy on the Peltier Channel. The seas are calm and the sun is shining, it’s turning into a glorious day. As the Zodiac cruises along the channel we can hear glaciers calving, their thunder breaking the silence. Our driver points out two named glaciers - Harbor and Thunder - as well as the highes peak on this Antarctic Peninsula- Mt. Frances. Our guide also pointed out Mt. Luigi and a row of jagged peaks referred to as Luigi’s girlfriends.
We thought we would travel the length of the Chanel swiftly then slowly return while taking in the sights but three humpback whales changed those plans. The three whales were feeding on krill near the ice shelf, diving and coming up, blowing and going down again. Our driver has studied whales and said that they were using bubbles blown from below to corral the krill near the top where the other whales could eat them. We think it was two adults and a baby that they were teaching how to dive and to catch krill. We followed them for over thirty minutes.
As we headed to Port Lockroy we passed as iceberg being used as a bed by a crabeater seal. Port Lockroy was a research station established by the British in 1944 and called Base A. It was abandoned in 1962 but in 1995 the Antarctica agency that protects the continent said it had to be torn down or restored as it was an eye sore. Today it is a museum and gift shop visited by almost every tourist to Antarctica, nearly 18,000 people. We mailed postcards from here which will probably arrive after we get home.
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