2022 Antarctica: South Georgia Island, Grytviken (12/11/2022)

Sunday, December 11, 2022 (continued)

A pair of Mirounga leonina/Southern Elephant Seal cows
check out our Zodiac as we landed at Grytviken for our
afternoon landing on South Georgia Island (by unknown)

A Southern Elephant Seal is still hanging out by the Zodiac

A yawning female elephant seal

Poa flabellata/Tussac Grass

Tussac grass seed pods

View from Grytviken toward King Edward Point,
a permanent British Antarctic Survey research station
and capital of the British Overseas Territory that
includes South Georgia Island

Grytviken is an abandoned whaling station (1904-1965),
the first and longest running on South Georgia Island;
most whaling stations had their own cemetery

Grave of the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest
Henry Shackleton who died during the
third Antarctic exploration that he led

Grave marker for Frank Wild, who participated
in five expeditions to Antarctica, four with
Shackleton and twice as his second-in-command
(by SteveAndEmma)

Frank Wild died in South Africa, but in 2011 his ashes were interred on the right side of the grave of Shackleton.

The grave of Félix Arturo, the Argentine
Petty Officer first machinist who was on the
submarine Santa Fe when it was captured by
the Royal Marine forces of the United Kingdom,
in 1982 during the Falklands/Malvinas War

The British wanted the damaged submarine moved and took a few of the Argentinian officers with them to operate the controls. When the submarine suddenly listed, Artuso reached up toward levers to stabilize the vessel, but a Royal Marine assumed he was trying to sink the sub, and shot him several times.

Carolina, Cristian, Karina, then De Bernardis, Admiral Martin,
Alberto Macías and Cobos Porta (photo by Lucas Martin)

The children of Félix Artuso (Cristian , Karina and Carolina) were at the time of the war eight, six and two years old respectively. They were given time alone at the grave to say goodbye and lay two small plaques. The war veterans also honored Artuso, and later passengers led by Quark's Argentinian historian, Federico, raised a toast using a historic blended whiskey called Shackleton.

The story of the whiskey is that on Ernest Shackleton's 1907-1909 expedition on the ship Nimrod, he had to leave behind certain supplies. In 2007, archaelogists found a cache of bottles (three cases of Scotch and two cases of brandy) under the floorboards of a hut that used to be the Nimrod expedition base camp at Cape Royds. The MacKinlay scotch was originally bottled in 1898, after being aged for 15 years. In 2010 the whiskey was carefully extracted and allowed to defrost for two weeks. The recipe for the venerable scotch has long since been lost, and MacKinlay has been purchased by another distillery. However, Whyte and MacKay, the parent company, chartered a private plane to have one bottle brought to Scotland in hopes that they could analyze the contents. They were able to produce a limited-edition run of 50,000 bottles of the recreated blend, selling for about $157 each. Five percent of the price of every bottle sold goes back to the Antarctic Heritage Trust. The original cache was placed in two containers with combination locks and returned to their location under the floorboards of the hut in Cape Royds.

The passengers then went to Shackleton's grave to toast the whiskey's namesake.

Acaena magellanica/Prickly Burr or Greater Burnet

Greater Burnet flower

The ever-present and invasive Taraxacum officinale/Dandelion

The endemic Anas georgica georgica/South Georgia
Yellow-billed or Pintail Duck

A better photo of the South Georgia Pintail Duck
(by Christopher Kirby-Lambert)

Fur seal harem with three pups

A leucistic fur seal pup, occurring about one in a thousand,
lacking pigment in the fur (by Alon Zaharony)

Macronectes giganteus/Southern Giant Petrels are
one of the tubenosed birds whose tube has a single "nostril"

Another female elephant seal with those giant eyes that
have spherical lenses; these specialized lenses help these
seals in absorbing more light in the dark depths, allowing
them to dive underwater to 1,500 m/nearly 5,000 feet (KSS)

View over the abandoned whaling station

Arctocephalus gazella/Antarctic Fur seal is dwarfed
by a rusted anchor of an old whaling ship

A fur seal pup

Seals are taking over the whaling station (KSS)

Note the harpoon on the bow of the
Norwegian whale-catcher Petrel (1928) (KSS)

Sterna vittata/Antarctic Terns (by Roger)

Antarctic Tern with a snack (by Charlie Wu)

Massive tanks for holding the whale oil produced by
boiling not only the blubber, but also the bones and meat

Former barracks and mess hall is held down by cables (KSS)

Grytviken Church (1913), a prefabricated
Norwegian Lutheran Church

In the center back are the pressure cookers to boil down
the blubber, on the right are separators used to purify the oil,
and in the foreground are generators (KSS)

Former community store is now the
South Georgia Island Post Office and Shop

Display of items once available in the store

Kent mails a few postcards from South Georgia Island

Former manager's villa (1914) is now
the South Georgia Island Museum (opened 1992)

Kent compares is wingspan to that of a
Diomedea exulans/Wandering Albatross

Tamiko stands with Ernest Shackleton (KSS)

The mosses, lichens, ferns and
fungi of South Georgia Island

The beetles of South Georgia Island

Neolithodes diomedeae/South Georgia Island King Crab

Examples of fish in the surrounding waters (KSS)

King penguin feathered pelt to touch

Endemic birds of South Georgia Island (KSS)

Try pot in which 19th century whalers boiled the blubber;
"Grytviken" is Swedish for "Pot Bay"

Replica of a Whaler Bunk Room

More seals near the ruins of the whaling ship Albatros

Grytviken Church (1913) was where the
funeral service for Ernest Shackleton was held

Inside the church

Tall potbelly stove for heat

Tamiko rings the church bell (KSS)

The football (i.e., soccer) pitch

I believe this is Acaena tenera/
Lesser Prickly Burr or Burnet

Kent's dinner appetizer was Seared Blood Pudding
with Spinach, Poached Egg and Sauce Mousseline
(blood pudding being a sausage of pork and pig's blood
with seasonings and perhaps a grain filler)

Artistic design on the dessert plate of Opera Cake

Artistic design on the dessert plate of Passion Fruit Parfait

Next: St Andrew's Bay.