Damoy Point

We sailed outside Biscoe Island to the Neumayer Channel overnight. We stopped at Damoy Point on the west side of Wiencke Island in the morning.

There is an old British hut previously used as a transit station in the 1960s. They used the glacier on top of the hill as an airstrip for twin otter aircraft. The glacier now has many crevasses, making it unusable as an airstrip.

There is a Gentoo penguin colony here that moved in after the base was abandoned.

While walking up to the viewing point, this skua landed a few feet behind me. I was able to turn around and take a quick picture before it left.

We were able to walk along a longer beach here to another Gentoo colony, sometimes the beaches are protected areas for the penguins to go in and out of the water. The naturalists had found a penguin skeleton and an egg the had hatched. If the egg had been eaten by a skua, the egg would have had more damage.

There were many penguins and chicks as well, signs of new life.

Walking back along the shore, this was spotted and pointed out to me. It stumped the naturalists on board, even the one that had done the talk on invertebrates. She thought it was a tunicate.

On the way back, we had to pass by a penguin that had come out of the water and promptly gone to sleep.

And another ready to go out and find more food.