Geologists in the Wild (updated with pix and video)

From Mindy, dated 6 January:

S. Georgia Sunrise
(click to enlarge)

King Penguin Closeup (click to enlarge)

We are extremely lucky during this cruise with the weather. Again this morning we woke to calm seas, barometer at 997, almost no wind, water temp 3 C, air 4C.  Our first landing is at St. Andrews Bay to see a very large colony of King Penguins and some tight folds in rocks from the Sandebugten (Gesundheit! - Ed.) Formation.

Mindy's minions (click to enlarge)

Colony Closeup (click to enlarge)

The King penguins were amazing to say the least.  We were standing amongst a colony of between 150-200 thousand pairs of penguins.  Yes, that's pairs.  Many of them are sitting on eggs, and a small group from our tour got to see an egg exchange (where mom and dad pass the egg so the other can go hunt for food) happen about 10 feet away from them!  I was not so lucky, but I chuckled when our bird expert, Jim Danzenbaker, pointed out that it isn't that rare since egg exchanges only happen about 150 thousand times each 10-18 days.  Many of the King penguins were molting, and this takes a lot of energy, so we were being very careful not to scare any of them (so they wouldn't waste precious energy).

Oakum boys (click to enlarge)

The King penguins are very colorful, but not all of them show these colors on our visit.  Some of the young penguins are covered in a brown fur (almost like down).  These are called oakum boys, and they got the name because sailors called oakum boys were the men who patched the ship with a brown furry substance and they would come out of the bowels of the ship covered in this brown fur (Must...not...make...easy...Navy...joke... - Ed.).  When sailors first saw these young penguins they

Colony colors (click to enlarge)

immediately thought of oakum boys, and the name stuck.  The penguins are very cute, and each one really does look different when you take the time to notice.  Each one also has a distinctive call that they vocalize to find their mate and/or their baby.  The sounds coming out of this colony were fun to listen to (and at times the calls sounded much like tropical birds).

Several passengers worked on their drawings in a workshop on shore, and others worked on improving their photos in a photography workshop along the penguin colony.

Sandebugten folds (click to enlarge)

The rocks at St. Andrews Bay were very nice, although quite a small outcrop. There were tight folds of Sandebugten (quartz rich sandstone and shale turbidites) with nice quartz veins.  Ian Dalziel, who has spent decades studying the geology in these parts, called these tight folds something like mega-fold mullions (chuckle for those who know of geology terms like boudinage and the like) (For those of you like me that don't, chuckle anyway...it's just polite - Ed.).  There were probably two phases to tectonics here -- first fractured and then thrusted, and then some folding deformed the whole thing again.

Glacier collapse (click to enlarge)

Turbidites
(click to enlarge)

Later in the afternoon we did another landing at Gold Harbor.  While on the landing, we saw three distinct instances of a large glacier calving off large chunks of ice.  Very loud explosion noises... Impressive, but at the same time depressing.  It is summer down here, so some melt is expected, but the extent of the glacial retreat is staggering.

More turbidites! (click to enlarge)

Which way is up? (click to enlarge)

On the beach at Gold Harbor we saw some really neat boulders of Cumberland Formation where you can very clearly see the contacts between successive turbidite flows.  This stopped a large group of geologists for a good 15 minutes as they argued about which direction was up (there were flame structures, inclusions, etc. but no agreement on which way was up) (How many geologists does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but you have to wait for the plates to shift the socket in the right position and the Coriolis effect to screw it in - Ed.).

The view from the hot tub
(click to enlarge)

Gold Harbor Sunset
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After the beach landing, I high-tailed it to the ship's hot tub (Shocked, I am - Ed.) because they needed to drain it before we head out for a few days at sea.  I soaked in the tub for a good hour, watching the rest of our group come in on zodiacs from the beach.  Boy, what a day, and what a treat to watch the sun set behind South Georgia Island from the bubbly comfort of a hot tub on the 6th deck of the ship.  Now on to sea as we set out for Elephant Island!

King Penguins (click to enlarge)

Seal yawn (click to enlarge)

Petrel in Gold Harbor (click to enlarge)

Note about our voyage - we were going to try to go to the South Orkney Islands, but the sea ice is too treacherous to navigate, so we'll skip them and head straight for Elephant Island (part of the South Shetland Islands).