St. Andrew’s Bay & Hercules Bay
Another pre-dawn wake-up call and yet another chance to take advantage of a perfect sunrise. We found ourselves anchored just off shore from South Georgia’s largest King penguin colony this morning- St. Andrew’s Bay—with nothing but dawn’s soft light to guide us towards the mass of life that awaited us. This is one of the few locations on the island that lacks a place name description as the origin of “St. Andrew’s” seems to be lost. What we do know is there are roughly 150,000 King penguins nesting here, and we had 6 hours to soak up as many of them as we could! With the shrieks and trills of Elephant seal pups and penguins guiding us towards shore to our west and the predawn light and crescent mood to our east we coasted in under near flat calm conditions to one of the most impressive wildlife settings the southern hemisphere has to offer. Territorial elephant seal bulls jiggling their huge mass across the beach, yelping elephant seal pups with their two huge black pools for eyes and of course the multitude of squawking, flapping, molting King Penguins in nearly all phases of life. There were fresh, white chested adults in new plumage, adults who still had patches of last year’s feathers clinging to all manner of body part and of course the lively “Oakum Boys,” - aka downy, brown chicks- who were in large crèches (group of chicks) awaiting their parents return from sea.
Amidst this mass of life we put ourselves, gently weaving through the random groupings of birds and pinnipeds in an attempt to record, observe or simply savor the utter magnitude of it all. To set the back drop we were humbled by towering peaks which are the incubation chambers of three glaciers that once covered the site grounds. With the slow retreat of these ice bodies has come the primary source of water that rushes through the colony and provides a place for the penguins to bath, drink or wait for their new feathers.
After what seemed like a full day’s worth of stimulation we headed further north along the east coast of South Georgia to a small yet impressively well fortified site called Hercules Bay. Surrounded on all sides by 500 meter cliffs of ancient, well metamorphosed rock we spent the late afternoon kayaking and Zodiac-cruising the bay. Miraculously, the good weather we’ve had for the past two days continued to hold allowing exploration into every nook, cranny and sea cave we could find. With Macaroni penguins and Light Mantled Sooty Albatross as company we whiled away the remainder of a wonderful day in comfort and calm.
