All About Antarctica – Whales, Seals, and Other Stuff

NOTE:  We're now in Valparaiso, Chile.  But I have about 15 or so blogs from our cruise, so I'm going to post these a few per day, in chronological order.  I'll try to remember to add this note so that people know to go back a few days.


8, 9, 10, and 11 February 2020

13 February 2020

This was our scheduled “tour” of the Antarctic Peninsula.  Our expedition team charted our route on a map, and printed a copy for each of us.  (Day 4 was in yellow and didn’t show up well in my photo, so I went over that with a blue pen.)  So you can see where we went, and all the places we never knew even existed.

We primarily sailed between the Antarctic Peninsula and the small islands along the outside (vaguely north or west) side of the peninsula.  We had views from both sides of the ship, and somewhat zigzagged across various straits to cruise into various bays for both views and animals.

Day 1 was sunny and gorgeous, with amazing blue seas.  We toured around the South Shetland Islands, spending time in Admiralty Bay and Hope Bay.  The captain said this was the first time they were able to see all of Hope Bay this season!

Day 2 was another sunny and gorgeous day, full of whales!  We sailed around Charlotte Bay, Wilhelmina Bay, Cuverville Island, and Dallman Bay.

Day 3 saw a weather change, and the day was overcast, cloudy, grey grey grey – we even had rain mixed with snow!  Antarctica definitely showed us the other personality!  We sailed around Neumayer Channel and Paradise Harbour.  But, well, not my idea of paradise – WAY too cold!

Day 4 wasn’t a bad morning, but it became grey and foggy and stormy at sea.  We cruised Deception Island, then sailed up Bransfield Strait and left the Antarctic Peninsula early due to storms and rough weather expected for next few days.  Predictions were 5 meter seas (15+ ft seas), and we had 50 mph sustained winds when we left!

On the nice days, the front deck was open for passengers to view the ocean, looking for animals and watching the ice bergs and landscape.  It was a great place to stand and listen to our Expedition Team give a running commentary of what we’re seeing.  Although I will admit I sometimes was waving my arms to indicate a group of penguins, or a whale or something.  Yeah, Eagle-Eye Schwartz, that’s me.

So, the Antarctic Ocean is sometimes called the Southern Ocean, beginning at everything south of 60 degrees S, rather than at the actual Antarctic Circle.  The Indian, South Atlantic, and South Pacific Oceans all join with the Southern Ocean, and this convergence of currents kicks up all kinds of nutrients from the ocean floor.  These nutrients feed the phytoplanktons, which in turn are eaten by krill (tiny shrimp-like animals), which are eaten by some penguins and whales.  This region is abundant in sea life!

Whales!  Whales actually evolved from land animals that returned to the sea some 30 million years ago.  The closest living animals to whales are hippos.  HIPPOS!  Okay, maybe I could see that – the enormous mouth, those stumpy legs turning into fins, the chubby body more at home in the water than on land.  Kind of makes sense, and actually, that’s sort of what happened over millions of years.  The legs did turn into fins, as whales spent more and more time at sea, until they couldn’t spend time on land at all.  And I guess it explains how mammals ended up becoming sea creatures.

Some whales eat fish, others eat krill.  The krill eating whales have baleens, the sort of spongy cartilage-like huge filter in their mouths.  They open their mouths and suck in ocean water, close their mouths, and push out the water – the baleen filters out the krill, which the whales swallow. 

Unfortunately, humans learned that whales had many uses – the baleen was flexible and could easily be carved into various tools labelled as “whale bone.”  (Corsets used “whale bone” for years.)  Whale blubber could be melted and used as fuel for lamps and heating.  Whale fishing nearly decimated the whale populations, but fortunately most countries have stopped whaling. 

However, we humans have gone the opposite way, and we are now “loving whales to death.”  All those whale encounters?  Or dolphin encounters?  Maybe fun for us, but not so good for the animals who aren’t given a choice.  The best way to see whales or dolphins or porpoises is from a distance.  Let the animals come to the ship if they want to.  Otherwise, watch them from a reasonable distance, and don’t try to touch them.  Pretty much the way we should treat all animals in their natural environments.

The Southern Ocean is a critical environment for whales to feed and breed.  The whales that are usually in this area are minke, humpback, and blue whales, as well as orcas (also known as killer whales because they will work together to attack and eat minke whales, and also they eat seals). 

Whales are extremely intelligent animals, and will work together to maximize their feeding.  For example, whales will group together and dive down, swimming in a circle underwater while slowly blowing out bubbles.  This bubble net will cause the krill or fish to group together in the center – and the whales then surface and easily devour the clustered krill or fish!  Orcas will sometimes spy-hop, raising their bodies straight out of the water, to see if seals are resting on ice floes.  If they are, the orcas will swim and dive around the ice floe, creating waves that eventually capsize the floe, so they can eat the seal.  Really intelligent and cooperative hunting techniques!

One last whale fact – blue whales are the largest animal to have ever existed, larger even than some of the dinosaurs!

We saw plenty of whales!  On our first day, we saw several minke whales off and on, between the ice floes full of penguins.  After lunch, I spent some time on our little balcony, looking for penguins and taking photos of the scenery.  As I was looking around, I heard a really loud huffing snort sort of sound – and I looked to my right and directly below our balcony was a huge minke whale!  They’re easy to identify, with a small curving dorsal fin – and it was RIGHT THERE!  He/She huffed and puffed and blew steam out of their blowhole a couple of times, swimming next to the ship before eventually diving down and swimming off.  WOW!  So exciting!!!

We also saw humpback whales, the ones who will spy-hop and breach, when they come up and then splash down on their sides!  They were doing this in the distance, and I got a few photos of them.  Humpbacks also will often flip their tails out of the water before they dive deeper into the water – the top side of the tail flukes are solid dark to black in color, while the underside of the tail flukes are lighter with partial white sections.  So looking at the photos, you can easily tell whether you are seeing the humpback diving down toward you, or away from you.  (Best photos are extra large at the end.)

Several humpbacks were also visible from our balcony, swimming on their side and raising one pectoral fin to wave.  They always look like they’re waving hello or goodbye, but this really is a way to cool off and rest after diving or breaching.

One evening, we saw a pod of orcas swimming around.  The orca males are easy to spot because they have that really tall triangular dorsal fin.  They played for a while, and then left.  Orcas are always exciting, though the pods we’ve seen in the Pacific Northwest usually are more playful.  These orcas may have just wanted to head home.  (Orcas technically are in the same family as dolphins, but we humans tend to consider them as whales.)

We saw a lot of whales, both humpbacks and minkes, sleeping.  This is the weirdest sight.  Being mammals, whales breathe air, not water.  So they just float on the surface, breathing through their blowhole, napping away.  From a distance, they look like partly submerged logs  floating on the water.  They aren’t very wide, because we’re seeing the spine and maybe that dorsal fin, and their sides slope down into the water.  Then our ship would sail closer, and the whale might wake up and do some diving and tail flipping.  Other whales would just ignore us and keep sleeping.  Eventually, we all became pretty good at recognizing sleeping whales!

And then seals!  Seals weren’t all over the way the penguins and whales were, but there certainly were plenty of seals around.  They’d be in the water, swimming around, and pop up their heads to look around at the ship as we cruised on by.  Small seals would look at us and go porpoising in the other direction.  In some of the penguin photos, there are seals looking like giant slugs strewn across ice floes. 

And then there were two leopard seals, sleeping on a small ice berg.  They barely watched us as we went by.  The larger seal turned around a few times, trying to get comfortable.  Or maybe to see what was going on, with the noise and the small waves.  The smaller seal looked up only to yawn a few times, and I seem to have caught a few of the yawns in the photos.  Either this seal was yawning, or maybe complaining to the other seal.  But that huge mouth opened up to show that big pink mouth full of big sharp teeth! 

Leopard seals were known to attack some of the early explorers to Antarctica, and for years leopard seals were avoided be scientists.  In fact, it was recommended that if divers saw a leopard seal in the water, they should get out.  And then, a BBC diving photographer spent some time diving and taking photos in Antarctica – he ended up with a photo essay of one leopard seal bringing him freshly killed penguins for him to eat.  Not that the photographer wanted to eat penguins, but it seemed that this particular leopard seal adopted him and tried to teach this weird looking creature how to hunt penguins.

So leopard seals get a mixed review.  Helper or hunter, depending on what they think of the human they meet.

But the little yawning leopard seal is pretty cute.