Jonathan in Antarctica: Landfall at South Georgia Island, January 2, 2013

Last night was a bit stormy. The winds have picked up to some 20+ knots, the sky become gray, and the seas rougher. We are apparently experiencing the margins of a large storm system some 200 miles northeast of us in the south Atlantic.

Not much going on this morning as we await our landfall at South Georgia. Land is not yet in sight (7:30 am). However, the number of seabirds has increased significantly. We are also seeing fur seals alongside the ship.

We passed the Shag Rocks last night. Another piece of the continent stuck in the South Atlantic. Shag Rocks are named because of the Shags (cormorants) that nest there. Not for some other Austin Powers-type reason.

Our first view of a part of South Georgia Island

Land, ho. sometime around 8 is we sighted land! Due to the large storm in the south Atlantic we have changed our original plan and will land in a sheltered bay on the west side of the island, King Haakon Bay. The scenery is incredible. Glaciers spilling down out of the mountains right into the sea.

We will attempt shore landings after lunch. We’ve been warned to stay away from Fur Seals as they have a very nasty bite that is prone to infection. This warning proved to be prophetic as it turned out that they were fairly nasty creatures that had a bad habit of "defending their turf." Mostly it was the young males that were a problem.

A glacier spilling down to the sea

Our ship in King Haakon Bay

We were able to spend a few hours on the beach in the afternoon. I hiked a bit with Ian Dalziel and Rudolph Trouw (a professor from Brazil and one of the expedition leaders) and than wandered off on my own to check out the scenery. The landscape is heavily glaciated. Everything is either till (till is material dumped by the glacier as it moves across the landscape, it may include boulders, gravel, sand, and/or clay in a jumble matrix) or bedrock. Glacial geomorphology includes outwash plains, drumlins (glacially sculpted landforms that are smooth and point in the direction of the glacier's movement), eskers (deposits of sand and gravel left by meltwater streams flowing under the glacier), and lateral moraines (the rocks and debris left along the edge of the glacier). There are also many exposures of glacial striae (scratches left by the glacier) on the bedrock.

Geologically, the bedrocks are metamorphosed turbidites. Turbidites are basically undersea landslide deposits that flow down the continental shelf into deep sea basins. Depending on their proximity to the slope and the channels they are in they are dominantly composed of sands and clays. With time and pressure these can become sandstones and shales. There are inclusions of limestone but mostly it is shales and sandstones of Cretaceous age. Due to the tectonism there are numerous folds and faults visible on the micro- and macroscale in the area of our landing.

After awhile, though, I decided it was time to return to the beach to get some photos of the “macrofauna” as Richard Alley said. On the beach we passed numbers of Fur Seals, Elephant Seals, and King and Gentoo Penguins. Many of the Fur Seals had pups. They reminded me of the young gorillas when I was in Africa last year. They just seemed to want to play.

The Elephant Seals are incredibly mellow. They choose to lay about in large groups, lying on top of one another. The Fur Seals are not anywhere near as social, except for the young.