Drygalski Fjord Area, South Georgia Island, January 3, 2013

Last night we journeyed south along the island to the southwestern corner and the area of Drygalski Fjord (see the map below).  Currently, we are steaming up the fjord for a bit of sightseeing.

Map showing South Georgia Island and sites visited during our expedition

In the morning we parked the boat in Larsen Harbor, within Drygalski Fjord.  Zodiacs were launched and we headed for shore.  Some intrepid souls ventured to the top of a local ridge approximately 1,000 feet above the shoreline.  The shoreline is a few narrow, rocky beaches with some Fur Seals hanging on them.  

View back to sea from within Drygalski Fjord

The lines on the rocks are the sheets of basalt
that fed the pillow lavas erupting onto the sea floor.

From a geologic standpoint, the rocks exposed in this area are all part of an ophiolitic complex. Ophiolites are bits of oceanic crust that became accreted or stuck to the continental crust. They can include the pillow basalts erupted at mid-ocean ridges, the dikes or magma sources for those basalts, and sediments found atop them. Sometimes all parts of them are visible, sometimes only portions. There are some excellent examples in California including the Coast Range, Josephine, and Smartville Ophiolite complexes.  At this location the ophiolite consisted mostly of sheeted dikes but a few pillow lavas were visible also.  Most folks, however, did not do the hike but instead re-boarded the Zodiacs for a tour of the fjord.  

The fjord narrowed until it hit the remnant of the glacier that had carved it.  At that point we were essentially within the cirque.  The views within the glacier were spectacular.   I used the point-and-shoot camera, as my hands were too damn cold to take the DSLR out of the dry bag!

Glacier entering the head of the fjord.

A Southern Right Whale

After lunch we headed over to another site, Cooper Bay for a possible landing.  Unfortunately the swells were too great for us to hit our originally chosen spot and we continued up the coast a bit.

Along the way, however, we had a bit of luck.  Michael Moore, the resident whaling expert, spotted a Southern Right Whale.  This ended up being the only Southern Right Whale we saw on our entire expedition. We saw hundreds of other whales (mostly Fins and Humpbacks) but just this one Southern Right. The Southern Right Whales were hunted to commercial extinction (defined as: the decline in the population of a wild species that renders it unprofitable to hunt) and are only slowly recovering.  According to Ted Cheeseman this is the first one he’s seen on his multiple tours of this area.  The whale hung out at the surface for some time and I was able to snap several shots of his tail flukes.