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#66: Shackleton’s Endurance
ePostcard #66: Shackleton’s Endurance “We all have our White South.”Ernest Shackleton The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914–1917) has haunted me for nearly 40 years. Most historians regard it as the last...
ePostcard #65: Tern, Tern Tern!
ePostcard #65: Tern, Tern Tern! Turn! Turn! Turn!To every thing there is a season, A time to be born, and a time to die.A time to mourn, and a time to heal. A time to break down, and a time to build up.A time to weep, and a time to laugh,A time to embrace, and...
ePostcard #64: Albatross Morning (South Georgia)
ePostcard #64: Albatross Morning (South Georgia) Albatrosses are some of the most iconic species in the Southern Ocean, but they also serve as sentinels for the challenges faced by albatross populations worldwide. South Georgia is home to globally significant...
ePostcard #63: Chinstraps on Ice (South Georgia)
ePostcard #63: Chinstraps on Ice (South Georgia) Chinstrap penguins, and their close relatives the Adélie and gentoo penguins, are members of the brush-tailed genus Pygoscelis. The great antiquity and fossil record of penguins has always intrigued me and I’m hoping...
ePostcard #62: South Georgia Pintail
ePostcard #62: South Georgia Pintail The endemic South Georgia pintail duck is the world’s most southerly waterfowl species. This beautiful pintail resides on South Georgia and nearby Bird Island year-round and is non-migratory, well-adapted to some of the most...
ePostcard #61: Glaciers in Retreat
ePostcard #61: Glaciers in Retreat Isolated in the Southern Ocean, South Georgia is truly a sentinel at the leading edge of global climate change. South Georgia is known for its ice caps and glaciers, and over the last few million years they have sculpted some of the...
ePostcard #60: Rock Fugue (South Georgia)
ePostcard #60: Rock Fugue (South Georgia) Shaken, not stirred.—James Bond To a geologist, rocks are richly-illustrated narratives—stories of deep earth cataclysm and landscape transformation over billions of years. To a biologist, rocks and landforms provide...
ePostcard #59: Appreciating Scavengers (Northern Giant Petrels)
ePostcard #59: Appreciating Scavengers (Northern Giant Petrels) Our task must be to freeourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embraceAll living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. —Albert Einstein This quote from Albert Einstein speaks...
ePostcard #58: Whale Tears (South Georgia)
ePostcard #58: Whale Tears (South Georgia) The total harvest of marine mammals around South Georgia represents a slaughter which has never been matched around the world. The whaling stations built by the Norwegian and British whaling industry were large-scale...
ePostcard #57: Whaling Rust
ePostcard #57: Whaling Rust When you first visit Grytviken you are, quite simply, stunned into silence. In November of 1904 the Norwegian, C. A. Larsen, with experience whaling in Arctic waters, established the first whaling enterprise on South Georgia at Grytviken....
ePostcard #56: Antarctic Fur Seals (South Georgia)
ePostcard #56: Antarctic Fur Seals (South Georgia) When British explorer Captain James Cook visited South Georgia in 1775, he noted the island’s abundant population of both Antarctic fur seals and southern elephant seals. In 1788, some 13 years after Cook’s visit,...
ePostcard #55: Leopards! (South Georgia)
ePostcard #55: Leopards! (South Georgia) Spotting this young leopard seal asleep on the beach was a surprise, the cold gleam of the South Georgia sun turning its fur to burnished silver. Despite my efforts to quietly find a place to sit down and simply watch, I...
ePostcard #54: Elephantastic Pups! (South Georgia)
ePostcard #54: Elephantastic Pups! (South Georgia) Imagine for a moment that you have been at sea for several months and that you are returning to South Georgia in late August (early spring) to give birth to a pup you have been nurturing in your womb for 11 months....
ePostcard #53: Sound and Fury (Elephant Seal Bulls)
ePostcard #53: Sound and Fury (Elephant Seal Bulls) On South Georgia, the first sign of the austral spring is the return of the bull elephant seals to their breeding beaches in late August. Once ashore, the most sexually mature bulls (the beach masters) begin...
ePostcard #52: Tracking Southern Elephants (South Georgia)
ePostcard #52: Tracking Southern Elephants (South Georgia) Oceanography 101: Before we begin satellite-tracking southern elephant seals on their epic migrations in the Southern Ocean we need a bit of Oceanography 101 and a good map (#2 below) to guide us on...
ePostcard #51: Bulls on the Beach (Southern Elephant Seals)
ePostcard #51: Bulls on the Beach (Southern Elephant Seals) The realm of the southern elephant seal encompasses the entire Southern Ocean. These massive pinnipeds, sometimes nicknamed “sea elephants,” are named for the male’s trunk-like inflatable snout (proboscis)....
ePostcard #50: Sentinels in the Crèche (South Georgia)
ePostcard #50: Sentinels in the Crèche (South Georgia) Sitting at the edge of a huge king penguin colony, I’m easily distracted by the overall visual magnificence of the scene and I forget that these penguins are telling me something about the state of their...