Falkland Islands Deployment: Grytviken

Grytviken

I've spent the majority of the deployment building up my imagination of what South Georgia would be like- I've seen a couple of books and it looked amazing. But then as we were approaching, I remembered that I'm not actually a professional David Attenborough, just a small-time pretender, and actually have no idea how to find out where typical wildlife hotspots are. Still, as we reached our anchorage, the scenery was nothing short of spectacular. South Georgia is in the Southern Ocean, so while Cape Horn at the tip of South America is still the furthest south we've been, this little island picks up all the antarctic winds and hence there is constantly changing weather conditions, aswell as a broken o-zone layer which presents you with sunburn if the sun should pop out. The weather in these photos is great, but the next morning was a different story. I was on the first boat ashore with the padre, because I had volunteered to play the organ for a remembrance service on the second day, and so on this first day I went ashore to "recce" the organ and see if it was playable! In the first photo on the right you can see King Edward point, and on the left set further back is the old whaling station in Grytviken. The whole settlement is looked after by about 20 people who either work for BAS (British Atlantic Survey) or volunteers working at the museum and post office (I think). It was also the first time I got to really test my new super expensive orange thermal insulating, super wellies. Everyone was taking the mick, but I was determined I would have the last laugh!

Right. Scrap that whole first bit. This is what Grytviken is REALLY like:

The small town is run by penguins. They run the show. They also guard it, and you have to stay out of their way. It's also a battleground for elephant seals. They can grow to 6 metres, and weigh over 3 tonnes (some of them)- so the whole place is pretty run down with violence... the whaling station has been torn down by elephant seals that took it too far (some people try to tell me the place was abandoned in the early eighties, but lets not get in the way of a good dit...)- the vast amount of King penguins have been drafted in to keep order, and Weddell seals are there just to raise morale. It's supposed to be mating season- but when one Montague elephant seal has decided to bag himself 30 of the finest females in the cove, you can imagine the furore amongst the Capulet elephants around the other side of the er... post office. There's ripped noses, bloodied blubber and scars deeper than Arnie's very best. Honestly, being a human, this is not the place to go for a drink. Possible hence the lack of pubs. But there is some respite.

Weddell seals don't always have an audience, so they just shipwreck themselves anywhere they see fit. Usually by the side of the road, the road which the penguins are patrolling up and down hour by hour. Infact this is them here, stopping to make sure I'm not causing too much hassle. This stretch of road seperates King Edward point from the whaling station, and there are 2 groups of 15 penguins who patrol it every hour. They didn't check my ID this time round.

Here's me again doing a bit of detective work. Seems the penguins march in step too.

This is a typical male elephant seal, covered in battle scars, bleeding all over the snow. It seems if they're not fighting, they're sleeping! I found this other one wedged in the grassy lumps behind the post office. And weddell Seals lying about the place looking for love!

Going just a little beyond Grytviken, I managed to get all these photos. With everyone else of course. The big face below is a female Elephant seal. They don't look so bad- their husbands are the ugliest things I've seen for a while! And a Weddell seal having fun...

We also decided to go for a trek up into the mountains. We had planned an epic world-record mission of 100km during the afternoon, but this is how great the view was after about 750 metres. And that's puns sinking in the snow:

It was at this point that my camcorder decided to breathe it's last, which is a real shame because I had some really exciting footage of seals mating and penguins doing their stuff. But my camera, which was also being put through the mill, seemed to just about hold out. The snow eased off and I managed to get many more photos. These are just a few of them. There was some other amazing things going on too- later in the day the temperature dropped, and the whole cove froze over, as you can see in the photos. The patches of ice were enough to stop our RIB running errands, so it was left to the local patrol boats with reinforced hulls to get through the ice and take us back to the ship! In the other photos you can see some pretty content looking Weddell seals, one of the king penguin shore patrols, me with a pretty lazy big male elephant seal, and an iceberg! Oh and a view of the Whaling station across the other side of the cove from King Edward point. Just behind it you can see the bell tower of the church, where I became the world's most southern Organist.... (and apparently I'm the first one to have played that organ)...