Last day on the ice

The last day was spent on South Shetland Islands, which are north of the tip of the peninsula.  Here's a portion of a map which I purchased from Ponant that shows all of the landing sites.

Our morning excursion was to Whalers Bay on Deception Island. Deception Island is a caldera - a volcano with a collapsed summit cone - and has been flooded by the sea creating a crater lake. The bay has a narrow and shallow entrance which makes navigation tricky for cruise ships. Here we are entering the caldera.

And this is what it looks like inside the caldera.

Here I am on my climb with the camera loaned by Jim.

 

And this is steam that has been heated by the magma in the caldera. I stuck my hand in the water and it is quite warm.

There wasn't a lot of wildlife on this excursion.  Here's some fur seals enjoying the steam from the caldera.

The second excursion of the day was to Walker Bay.  Way more wildlife on this stop.  We'll start with some petrels.

 

Next up are the elephant seals. Elephant seals normally live in the water, but have to come ashore once a year to molt which takes about 3 weeks. Males and females molt at different times. The males don't particularly like each other, but are dependent on each other to stay warm. So there were frequent spats.

Elephant seals don't eat penguins, but they might roll over and smoosh one. Penguins nonchalantly strut by the elephant seals.

Young elephant seal going to join the pack.

One more elephant seal snoozing away from the pack.

Can't leave Antarctica without some final penguin pictures and videos.