Attitude

The night was rather disrupted by several unsuccessful attempts to recover the would-be Shackleton skiers in Possession Bay.

Their attempts to mimic Shackleton had been foiled by some wild weather and most had been forced to head for an "emergency escape" rendezvous. The expedition staff finally managed to recover the cold, wet and tired skiers at about 06:00. This meant that we weren't in the right place for our planned morning landing, and when we did get there (St Andrews Bay) the wind was too wild to allow us to go ashore. The weather in South Georgia is very localised. The skiers had had white-out conditions, while the rest of us were getting sun-burn.

And just a few miles from St Andrews Bay we were able to get ashore in Ocean Harbour. The weather here was warm, windless and sunny. Ocean Harbour was a whaling station at one point, but most of the site has been cleared, leaving only a few rusting bits of machinery and lots of grumpy Antarctic fur Seals.

These guys have serious attitudes, particularly at this time of year - this big male was guarding his bit of the beach, and even the new-born cubs seem to take the view that their first action post-birth is to lift themselves upright and to growl at the first thing they see.

The fur seals will try and chase you (if they are so inclined). The advice is to face them down and roar and shout back - there is no mileage in trying to out-run them, they can move very fast. And if they bite you, you do have a problem. These guys don't clean their teeth (never mind flossing), and a bite is very likely to get badly infected.

I see this is blip 500. I could claim that the fur seal has 500 teeth, or that there are 500 fur seals on each beach in South Georgia. However the teeth count would be an over-estimate and the beach count a dramatic under-estimate.

500/2542