Cierva Cove

So this morning we got up close and personal with the penguins at Mikkelsen Harbour.
This afternoon we were at Cierva Cove, but rather than landing anywhere we were taken on a 90 minute cruise around the cove in a zodiac, which allowed us to get a really good view of some of the ice bergs, and we also encountered lots of animals.

First we pulled up near a couple of humpback whales. As we were waiting for the whales to re-surface a number of penguins porpoised past. They are too fast to take a decent photo of, but I did get a short video, which I will probably edit and post on Facebook when I get home.

Spot the bird that isn't a penguin

In fact penguins were swimming all over the place, and we were able to pull up next to a cliff where there was a colony of chinstrap penguins (slightly smaller than the Gentoo penguins we met this morning), complete with one black and white bird that was having an identity crisis - because it definitely wasn't a penguin.





We saw a number of ice floes with leopard seals on them, and got up close to 2 of them.  Leopard seals sometimes like to bite the zodiacs, but these guys seemed too lazy to get up off their stomachs and enter the water, so we were safe enough.



Of course, whilst all these animals were lovely to see, they are the sort of animals that you anticipate encountering in Antarctica.  But our zodiac driver, Luke, popped his hand into the water and came out with this:

It's called a salp, and although it looks like a piece of red something caught in a chip of ice, that is actually not ice - it has a gelatinous body similar to a jelly fish.  Once Luke had pointed one out we could see them in the water all around us.

We also saw some amazing ice-bergs.  Take a good look at the tiny black blob at the bottom of the ice berg in the photo below - that's a bunch of people in a zodiac.  Hopefully that gives you an idea of just how big these ice-bergs were.

It's hard to imagine how what the expedition staff will come up with tomorrow can  possibly top today's experiences.  Tomorrow though we have 2 landings on the mainland (Today's landing at Mikkelsen was on an island off the coast of Antarctica).