eGlobal Education

Death and Birth on South Georgia Island

elephant seal at sea

Yesterday was another beautiful, sunny day here, but so windy that we had to delay our landing a while.  Nonetheless, we did get to go ashore in a small cove covered with King Penguins and both fur and elephant seals.  The animal population was so dense that we could only walk along the shore, generally in the low surf, in order not to disturb the animals.  Fortunately, we have high-topped rubber boots, perfect for landing and walking in the surf.

 

Male fur seals preparing to fight

The male fur seals are quite aggressive and snarl and growl at one another and at us as they try to protect their small patches of territory.  All the males fight constantly, leaving large gashes on one another.  Their sleek hides are covered with scars.  The male elephant seals are also territorial and quite aggressive, but don’t bother too much about people.  Still, Don got closer than one huge male liked yesterday and he got a solid butt in his butt.  Fortunately didn’t fall down, because that would have been really dangerous.  These huge animals have formidable teeth and jaws.

There are lots of baby seals scattered about, large black blobs with huge eyes.  Within a short time, their mothers wean them and leave them pretty much to their own devices.  By that time, though, they are quite big and can swim well.  It’s a fascinating sight to watch these large, blubbery animals heave themselves with surprising speed out of the water and onto rocks or beaches.  Some even go a mile or more inland, if there is enough relatively flat land, to find a little peace from the constant agitation onshore.

baby fur seal nursing

sucessful Skua with dead penguin

In the afternoon, we took Zodiac tours into a small cove where Macaroni Penguins nest and molt.  Like every other beach on the island, there were hundreds of seals.  We watched one female who was surrounded by skua—big, sea vultures—watching her intently.  Because they are scavengers, we figured they were watching her give birth so they could get the placenta.  Sure enough, we watched as a small black creature dropped onto the sand next to the female.  She fought off the skua briefly before a huge male seal came over to help.  He made one lurch at the birds and decided enough had been done, so fell asleep on the sand.  The baby lay there next to its mother, resting, big eyes peering around.

Just before, we had observed a large group of skua about 50 yards from shore fighting over something.  It turned out to be a dead penguin.  An earlier group had seen an injured penguin surrounded by birds pecking at it.  We assume the dead and devoured penguin was the same one.  A sad fate for the bird, but a meal for the skua chicks up in the cliffs above the beach.

 

We have seen 5 kinds of penguins—rockhopper, king, Gentoo, Magellanic and macaroni.  The rockhoppers and macaronis are tufted penguins, with spiky topknots.  The king and Gentoo penguins have smooth heads and are larger than the first 2.  All carry themselves with great dignity and seem to enjoy posing for endless photos.  We will probably not see the emperor penguins, stars of the movie, “The March of the Penguins” because they will be 100 miles from the Antarctic shore nesting.

king penguins with seals

Macaroni penguins

Researchers have put GPS devices on some female seals to see where they go.  In one of our daily  lectures, we looked at a map of one seal’s annual hunting trip.  She started at South Georgia and went hundreds of miles out to sea before doubling back and going in large circles for months.  Finally, she returned to South Georgia to have her pup.  Since seals molt, she shed her tracking device with her old skin and the researchers were able to recover it to study the data thoroughly.  What remarkable technology we have.  Throughout her journey, whenever she came to the surface of the water, the GPS device radioed information about her to a satellite and then to the research station.  It also recorded the depths of her dives, which were several hundred feet.   Elephant seals are the deepest divers, going as deep as 5000 feet.

Rockhopper penguin

Gentoo penguin

We left South Georgia last night, after the captain maneuvered the ship into a tiny and magnificent cove to let us see the glaciers grinding away towards the sea.  Now we’re at sea for 2 days and I am eternally glad for my anti-sea sickness patches.  It’s quite rough and will continue that way until we get to the Antarctic Peninsula, where I hope we’ll be a bit more sheltered.

Magellanic penguin in burrow nest

I will try to upload a page of photos to this blog is I can get enough bandwidth to do that.  Otherwise, I’ll do that when we get home.