November 21
Today was our last day in Antarctica. We started our day at Deception Island. Deception Island is actually an active volcano. It last erupted in the 1970s. At that time, it had scientists living on the island. Before that, it was a whaling station until the 1930s. There are still a few buildings on land, but the cool thing about this island is that the water in some places is very warm. Hot tub warm. Shockingly warm. It’s not entirely clear to me why we didn’t polar plunge in this area instead. Here, you can actually see the steam coming off the water:
We had some light hiking on the island that Michael joined me for.
Also on Deception Island, we were able to see some krill that had washed up on shore. Krill is the main food source for penguins in Antarctica and some seals and whales. It is basically the bottom of the food chain that keeps everything moving. Note: a new trendy vitamin to take is krill oil (like taking fish oil pills) – which is contributing to a decline in the krill population in Antarctica and declining population of some penguin species. Global warming is also contributing, but that is a whole other conversation and after hearing a lecture on it on the ship, more complicated than anything I’m posting about here. So for now, krill:
The notable thing we saw on the zodiac cruise was a fur seal. I had previously seen a crab eater and a lot of weddell seals. So I was pumped to grab another type of seal. Totally can’t make a picture of this happen.
We were supposed to head over to another spot in the afternoon for some zodiac cruises and skiing, but we found whales! There were two humpback whales that were spotted, so the Captain took our ship over in their direction to see if they wanted to play with us.
It ended up being a mommy whale and a second year baby whale which was really fun to watch. The mom whale was teaching her baby how to dive and swim, so she would dive, showing off her fin and the baby would dive with their fin flopping to the left or right. We spent about an hour and a half watching the whales swim all over.
By the time we finished with the whales, we had missed our window to go on shore the last time. Totally worth it. With it being our last night in Antarctica, we had a champagne toast and sushi on the back deck. With just a little time left before dinner, there was another whale sighting – Fin Whales! This is the third type of whales that I’ve seen (remember those orcas from a few days ago). From a few miles out, we could see six or seven whales blowing. These whales didn’t give us as good of a show as the humpbacks from earlier today, but it was still cool to see them.
