King Penguins, Elephant Seals, & Fur Seals

From my perspective, South Georgia brought more dramatic experiences than the Antarctic Peninsula. During the two days we cruised off South Georgia, we stopped at several bays and rode zodiacs to shore in order to visit populations of Fur Seals, Elephant Seals, and King Penguins. Equally dramatic was a zodiac cruise at Drygalski Fjord.

Antarctic Fur Seal

The dominant species on South Georgia is the Antarctic Fur Seal with a population estimated of between 4 and 6 million seals, which is about 90% of the world population. Adult fur seals can weigh 700 pounds
During the 18th and 19th centuries sealers almost destroyed the species in their quest of seal pelts that were made into ladies’ coats. The catch for a single summer was as high as 112,000. By 1822 the fur seal was nearly extinct on South Georgia. The quest for more seals motivated exploration of Antarctica and the southern ocean.

Today the fur seal population has recovered to the point that they are pushing out of their known traditional living areas. Since 2010 seals have pushed south to reach the southern side of Marguerite Bay. Another example is Signy Island in the South Orkney Islands. In 1977, the seal population was about 1600; in the mid-1990s it had grown to 20,000.

Seal migration poses ecological challenges for Antarctic vegetation. When a 700-pound seal hauls out onto land, coastal vegetation is trampled. The seals also defecate and urinate near freshwater lakes, polluting the water. Ecologists haven’t found a solution to this challenge yet.

Elephant Seals

Half the world’s population of southern Elephant seals (Mirounga leonine) also lives in South Georgia with about 400,000 individuals coming ashore to mate.

Male elephant seals can dive to depths of 4600 feet and stay at that depth up to two hours. In October the males come ashore to fight over harems of females. The largest males are known as beach masters and can weigh up to 4 tons. I decided to enjoy them from a distance.

King Penguins

South Georgia is also home to King, Macaroni, Gentoo, and Chinstrap Penguins. Without a doubt, King Penguins are the star of the show. South Georgia has 450,000 pairs of breeding King Penguins, the largest population of King Penguins in the world. The birds grow up to 39 inches tall, and adults can reach a weight of 35 pounds.
The attraction of South Georgia is its proximity to the Antarctic Convergence where cold polar waters meets more temperate ocean water, and the waters are populated with squid, krill, and lantern fish.

King penguins sport a coat of 70 feathers per square inch. There are three inner layers of down feathers for insulation, and outer feathers that are oiled and waterproof. Penguins shed all their feathers every year in a ‘catastrophic molt.’ It takes four weeks to replace their plumage which keeps the birds on land and hungry.

King Penguins also come on land to breed. Penguins are serially monogamous and lay their eggs in January. The female lays one two-pound pear shaped egg. The egg incubates for about 55 days. Rather then making a nest, King Penguins carry the egg in a warm fold near their feet. From the outside, it looks like the penguin is walking on its heels. It takes 14 months to raise a chick.

Whaling and sealing expeditions also threatened penguin populations on South Georgia. Lacking trees to cut for firewood, the hunters burned millions of penguins and used their oil and blubber to fuel fires they used to process the whales. The oil was also used for lamps, heating, and cooking.

Today, the King Penguin population thrives on South Georgia, which brings me to my Third Antarctic Lesson: Wildlife Recovery. To learn that the destruction and near extinction of whales, seals, and penguins in South Georgia and Antarctica did not result in their disappearance from our world is inspiring at a time when so many plants and animals struggle to survive. It is also humbling to realize that the greatest threat to biological species is human kind.

Drygalski Fjord

Drygalski Fjord is a mile-wide bay that recedes northward for 7 miles until it ends at Risting Glacier. The glacier is 4.5 nautical miles long and flows southeast into the head of Drygalski Fjord.

As we cruised on the surface, the silence and peacefulness of the fjord brought a sense of peace. We passed a seal resting on an iceberg. We encountered an iceberg with an unusual archway at the center but wisely did not approach too closely since we did not know how deep the ice extended. On the shore, the glacier calved. At one point, snowflakes fell on us. The experience was surreal and very different from the excitement generated by wildlife.

A video from a sail onboard the Scenic Eclipse gives some sense of what it was like to travel on the surface of the water in Drygalski Fjord.

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Illustrations

Elephant seals on the Kerguelen Islands by Antoine Lamielle.

Penguin egg by Didier Descouens.

Map showing Dryglaski Fjord, South Georgia released to public domain.

Other Photos by Author.

Southern Elephant Seal, Gold Harbor, South Georgia. Smithsonian.

Sean Mowbray. “Fur Seals Made a Tremendous Comeback. That Might be a Problem.” The Atlantic. Dec. 2, 2022.

The post Lessons from an Antarctica Cruise: Wildlife Recovery first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

After our first expeditions ashore on West Falkland, Le Lyrial began a journey of two days across the Scotia Sea to South Georgia. Scotia Sea, which covers the waters between Drake Passage, Tierra del Fuego, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Island, the South Orkney Islands, and Antarctica, was our first experience in choppy ocean water. Everyone on board quickly applied the “sea-sickness patch” to stave off symptoms of sea sickness. As we gained a semblance of sea legs, waves crashed into the side of the ship.

On the second day, Shag Rocks broke up the ocean view. The rocks, located 150 miles west of South Georgia and 620 miles from the Falklands, are a fragment of the Andes mountains that was left behind when the continents drifted apart.

South Georgia

Sixty percent of South Georgia is covered by glaciers, a “chilling” fact when you think of it. Though the island may have been discovered in the 17th century, it wasn’t until 1775, while on his return to the Sandwich Islands in the Pacific Ocean, that Captain James Cook made landfall and claimed the island for Britain. Why name the island South Georgia?? Perhaps because George III was the British king, and there was already a North American colony named Georgia.

Sealers and whalers frequently passed the island hunting for marine prey until in 1904 a Norwegian company created a more permanent presence by setting up the first whaling station at Grytviken. Five more whaling stations along the northeast coast soon followed. The stations closed in 1965 when there were too few whales left in the region for the industry to make a profit. From 1904 to 1965, over 175,000 whales passed through the processing plants.

Today the whaling stations’s collapsing toxic structures continue deteriorating, their machinery wrapped in asbestos. At Grytviken in 2003, there was a major asbestos removal project, and some buildings at Grytviken are now being used.

[Sidebar: in 1979 Christian Salvesen contracted with an Argentinian scrap metal merchant to salvage metal from the whaling stations on South Georgia. Under the guise of inspecting scrap metal at Leith, Argentinean forces landed on South Georgia igniting the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and Great Britain.]

Ernest Shackleton — Heroic Explorer & Management Model

Though he was not the first man to reach the South Pole, Ernest Shackleton is perhaps the best known explorer associated with Antarctica. Shackleton led the Imperial Trans-Atlantic Expedition 1914-1917. The expedition employed two ships: The Endurance would take the main party to Vahsel Bay via the Weddell Sea. From there, Shackleton would lead a team of six men across the continent. A second ship, the Aurora, would take another party to McMurdo Sound on the other side of Antarctica, and set up supply depots so Shackleton’s party could complete their cross-continental journey.

On Dec. 5, 1914, the Endurance left South Georgia, despite warnings that the ice pack could trap the ship. By Jan. 19, 1915, the Endurance was frozen in an ice flow in the Weddell Sea, essentially trapped until the spring thaw. The Endurance drifted northward with the ice. In September, the ice began breaking up. The ship’s hull weakened under pressure from the ice and its movements. On October 24, 1915, a wave rippled across the ice. It lifted the Endurance‘s stern and tore off its rudder and keel. Shackleton gave the order to abandon ship. The Endurance sank on November 21. One could say it was a discouraging situation.

For the next two months, the explorers camped on the ice flow, hoping to drift towards Paulet Island, a known depot for supplies. By March 17, 1916, the men were only 60 miles from the island, but couldn’t reach it through the ice. On April 9th, the ice flow broke. Shackleton ordered his crew into the three lifeboats. After five days at sea, the men landed at Elephant Island. This was not particularly auspicious, because Elephant Island was too far from shipping routes to expect anyone to find them. The good news: the men were on land and still alive. The bad news: it seemed likely they would die on the island.

Shackleton decided to risk an open boat journey to South Georgia. He selected the sturdiest of the three lifeboats, christened it the James Caird after one of the expedition’s financial backers, and chose five men to join his rescue expedition. The remaining 22 men stayed at Elephant Island. Whether going to sea, or staying on land, the men must have thought their future was hopeless. What was the likelihood the James Caird would reach viable land? And if it did, would anyone return for them?

Shackleton took provisions for four weeks: 33 gallons of water, 250 pounds of ice, a sextant, a sea anchor, binoculars, and charts. The James Caird put to sea on Apr 24. For 15 days it managed to avoid capsizing until finally, on May 8, South Georgia came into sight. On May 15, the men established a camp on at the North side of King Haakon Bay which was on the southern shore of South Georgia. The whaling stations the men needed to reach were on the other side of the island.

Shackleton selected two men to traverse the island with him. Each carried his own rations. They also took a Primus lamp with oil, a small cooker, a carpenter’s adze to cut the ice and an alpine rope that could reach a full length of 50 feet. As they walked, they realized they were traveling on glaciers. It took 36 hours to reach the whaling station at Stromness on May 20. What a sight they must have been with their tattered clothes and emaciated bodies. The first people Shackleton encountered ran away.

Eventually the men reached the wharf at Stormness, and and an employee took them to station manager Thoralf Sørlie’s house. The employee knocked on the Sørlie’s door introducing the . . .
“three funny looking men outside, who say they have come over the island and they know you. I have left them outside.”
When Sørlie came out, Shackleton asked “Do you know me?”
Sorley replied he recognized the voice.
“My name is Shackleton,” his guest replied.

Shackleton noted that after a meal, a bath, and a change of clothes, “we had ceased to be savages and had become civilized men again.”

Shackleton immediately sent a boat to pick up the men he left on the other side of South Georgia, and began organizing the rescue of the men left behind on Elephant Island. After three failed attempts, Shackleton appealed to the Chilean government for assistance and rescued all 22 men on Aug, 30, 1916. They had remained in isolation for four and a half months.

Assessment of Shackleton’s Leadership & Management Skills

As Nancy Koehn, a historian at Harvard Business School, notes Shackleton, while not always making the best decisions, pivoted as circumstances required for the best possible result.

High on the list of poor management decisions was Shackleton’s decision to disregard warnings from experienced seamen that the pack ice was unusually thick, and that if the wind or temperature suddenly changed, the Endurance could be trapped in the ice.

However, when ice trapped the Endurance, Shackleton rose to the challenge and shifted his attention to the goal of remaining with the ship until the spring thaw released it and getting his crew home. To do this, he needed to keep the men’s spirits up.

Recognizing the potential danger of cramped quarters and enforced idleness was greater than the ice and cold, Shackleton kept up a daily routine. Each man performed his usual duties. Decks were swabbed. Scientists gathered specimens from the ice. Hunters brought back seals and penguins for food. Meals were served at the usual time, and the men socialized after dinner. Initially, not all the men would eat penguin, because superstition said penguins had the souls of lost sailors. Eventually, hunger trumped superstition.

When forced to abandon the Endurance to camp in tents on the ice flow, Shackleton knew his behavior and confidence would affect his men. So he projected confidence that they would all survive and make it home. The men knew their leader’s absolute commitment to their survival.

The contemporary management lesson of Shackleton’s success is that a leader must be committed to a larger purpose and use of flexible, imaginative methods to achieve it.

In 1921 Shackleton embarked on his last expedition to Antarctica and arrived at South Georgia on Jan. 4, 1922. He died of a heart attack the next day. While his remains were enroute to England, a message from Shackleton’s widow requested that her husband be buried on South Georgia. He was interred at the Grytviken cemetery on Mar. 5, 1922.

Grytviken no longer has permanent residents, but a few people live there during the summer months to manage the South Georgia Museum. It is a popular stop for cruise ships in Antarctica; passengers can disembark to visit the museum and pay their respects to Shackleton’s gravesite. Such a visit was on our itinerary, but wind and sea had other plans.

The word describing my second cruise lesson is Endurance. Set a realistic goal, adjust as needed, and never lose sight of what is truly important. Business schools use Shackleton’s loyalty to his crew and their successful rescue is a case study of successful management skills. I suppose the lesson is that with endurance even the most negative outcome can be managed.

On Mar. 5 2022, the Endurance22 Expedition located the Endurance‘s underwater resting place four miles from where she sank.

illustrations

Routes of ships Endurance & Aurora. Public Domain, modified by Finetooth.

Endurance sinking in Antarctica 1915.

Elephant Island Party by Frank Hurley 1916.

Launch of James Caird from shore of Elephant Island 1916.

Ernest Shackleton at Ocean Camp, Weddell Sea, 1915..

Panorama view of Grytviken by Jens Bludau.

Shackleton’s grave at Grytviken by Lexaxis7.

Nancy F. Koehn. “Leadership Lessons from the Shackleton Expedition.” New York Times. Dec. 24, 2011.

Kieran Mulvaney. “The Stunning Survival Story of Ernest Shackleton and His Endurance Crew.” History. Mar. 9,2022.

The post Lessons from an Antarctica Cruise: Endurance first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.