Saturday 28 November 2009

Crossing the Drake Passage

Our embarking guests had a very long day yesterday and so this morning, our Imaq restaurant was strangely quiet for breakfast at 0730h! Only later was it hustling and bustling as usual. Through the day, the Drake was kind to us, gently rocking the ship and making many of us all feel a little tired. Some decide to stay and their cabins and recover from the travel day but most actively participated in our lecture series on marine wildlife photography, mammals, penguins, biodiversity and icebergs.

In the morning we held a wildlife photography workshop on deck. There we practiced our skills at capturing images of birds in flight, which is not easy. Although the numbers were relatively low, we had plenty of seabirds as subjects. Most notable were the Wandering, Black-browed, Grey-headed, and Light-mantled Sooty Albatrosses following and encircling the ship. These birds are large and relatively slow moving so made great bird-in-flight subjects for beginners. We were unlucky with the whales today but expect to see some in-transit tomorrow. They are still moving south to Antarctica and don't settle-in down there until summer (January).

Tomorrow we will approach the South Shetland Islands through the day, and we all look forward to our first landing on the Last Continent- Half Moon Island and the Chinstrap Penguin colony there.