Brown Bluff, Weddell Sea

Each day on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula seems to begin early. Today was no exception as a 2:30 a.m. wake-up call summoned us to our first emperor penguin sighting of the trip. Nestled into the folds of a moderately-sized iceberg, this twilight encounter with our planet’s largest penguin triggered what became a day to top.

By 3:00 a.m. we had already seen the icon of the Antarctic, been kissed by early morning light reflected off of a tabular iceberg and beheld the Antarctic Peninsula proper for the first time on this voyage.

By 10:30 a.m. everyone willing and able took their first steps onto the NE extremity of the peninsula and cavorted with the Antarctic’s other ice-loving biped, the Adelie penguin. This took place at a site called Brown Bluff, known for its nesting snow petrels, kelp gulls, Adelie and gentoo penguins and the stunning backdrop of solidified ash deposits that give the location its reddish-brown hue and subsequent moniker.

After a morning with penguins and blue-bird skies, our rudder steered us south, deeper into the Weddell Sea than this naturalist has ever been. Past pods of small type “B” killer whales cruising the pack ice edge, around cathedrals of glacial ice and along the eastern shores of Seymour and then Snow Hill Island, taking us to within a mere eight miles of the northernmost emperor penguin colony this planet supports.

At that southernmost milepost we encountered the northern extremity of the Weddell Sea pack ice. A continuous skin of frozen water stretched south of us as far as the eye would allow, peppered with black, waddling dots. As we neared the ice edge, a group of seven emperor penguins surfaced onto the white expanse before making their seemingly sorrowful, slumped march away from us. Sure to turn around again in the days to come, these and the other emperors we could see on the horizon are preparing for their summer at sea, having just endured the long dark Antarctic winter, and celebrating the abundance of the approaching summer feast.

We couldn’t help but share their excitement for all that summer brings to the Antarctic as our day was full of life and new horizons as well.