Some nice weather has arrived, with blue skies and no waves. This allows us to a new island called Dream. It was beautiful and we hiked around for about eight miles over hills full of loose rocks and heavy snow. This area is where the chinstrap penguins nest and they are as cute as can […]

We’ve been stuck inside for a couple days due to heavy winds so time to share some pics. Cute pair of snuggly giant petrels View from atop of a glacier Leopard seal pup! Very rare spotting. Cute crabeater seal hauled out on an ice flow. Tiny weddel seal pup that came into our station. Probably […]

Our boat was stalked by a leopard seal today! We tried to get closer to identify the species (crabeaters and leopard seals are closely related and look similar far away) and he became very curious and came up to our boat and swam around and under. Pretty wild! He then followed us after we left […]

So we celebrated thanksgiving dinner last night. Everyone had the opportunity to make a dish or dessert if desired. I probably have eaten 15 pieces of pie in the last 24 hours. Anyway! It’s been super windy the past couple days so we haven’t been able to go out on the boats. Since we’re land […]

Today was super cool. The weather was, well, nasty. But we had to take advantage of the winds not being too high so we went out. Some of the islands we couldn’t approach without damage to the boat because the swell was so bad and the landings can be treacherous with so much snow. We […]

So the wind has reached over 20 knots, which means it’s unsafe to take small boats out so the bird team is inside half the day doing data entry and paperwork. Over the past couple days we’ve been continuing to measure colony numbers of individuals and nests. It’s crazy to see the loss that can […]

Saw our first lep yesterday! Very exciting. They only show up down here when the ice is right enough for them to float on. They’re a crazy predator that feeds on krill, octopus, fish, seabirds, and other seals. Them showing up means maybe orcas! Also the phytoplankton is blooming which means krill which means more […]

The sun has been so nice the past couple days with visibility 100% so you can actually see the mountains surrounding us. Very pretty. Today we did a couple hikes on various islands to look for brown skuas. Most of the skuas are banded with numbers around their “ankles” so they’ve been tracked for a […]