Hannah Point

In the morning, we stopped at Hannah Point, on Livingston Island in the Shetland Islands. It was originally planned to be an early landing as the wind was supposed to pick up by mid-morning. That didn’t happen, and another ship canceled their afternoon visit, so we ended up spending a gorgeous day there.

The morning landing was supposed to be a walk from Hannah Point to Walker Bay, which is about a mile. High swell pushed the start later and canceled the walk. We visited Walker Bay in the morning.

We landed near some elephant seals.

The ‘beach master’ is the dominant elephant seal. It’s his harem that is sleeping above. They can get much larger than this one.

A chinstrap penguin got out of the water and started walking towards its colony which is over a quarter mile away. Not sure why it chose to get out of the water and walk, when it’s so much faster for them to swim. It walked right in front of this sleeping elephant seal.

In the afternoon, we stayed at Hannah Point and landed at the penguin colonies there. There are both Chinstrap and Gentoo penguins here. I’ll focus on the chinstraps, as this is the first colony we’ve landed at. Chinstraps have a very distinct strong odor in their colonies. Notice that the nest area is all wet, the chinstraps create this.

The Gentoo penguins and the chinstrap penguins share the point, with each having small nesting areas. They will walk through the other’s area, but the penguins don’t seem to snap at other species more than they do their own. Parents will snap at anything that approaches their nest.

The southern giant petrels also nest at Hannah Point. Here’s a chick and adult.

The seals have come ashore to shed and regrow a new coat of fur for the coming winter. The penguins that are done raising chicks are molting, regrowing their feathers for the coming winter. Everyone is a little testy during this process as they can’t go in the cold water for three weeks or so. So they can’t feed during this time which adds to the testiness.

Notice the molting Gentoo penguin.