Husvik Harbour, South Georgia - 30 November 2007
by Kate Laird

It's a very busy morning today as we are heading out for the Falklands this afternoon. We'd planned to go tomorrow, but it looks like a good weather window for today, so we're jumping our schedule up.

Yesterday, all the guests were able to go ashore for the whole day. Lots going on on the beach - fur seals giving birth, mating king penguins, and lots of young people from the British Schools Expedition group getting ready to walk to Fortuna Bay. Pelagic Australis is here supporting the project. (All land-based expeditions to South Georgia require a support boat, usually a yacht, on hand to rescue them if anything goes wrong.)

Helen and Anna had a wonderful day making muffins and drawing pictures with Jess on Pelagic Australis while Hamish and I spent the day preparing the boat for sea (it's amazing how much there is to do, even though we've been sailing almost every day since we arrived in South Georgia.)

In the late afternoon, I went over to retrieve Helen, Anna and Jess, and we picked up Hamish and went for a walk around Husvik. I could spend weeks here hiking ... I was very jealous because when Hamish went to untie the dinghy, he saw a fur seal pup being born ... (of course, he'd left his camera at the landing spot) ... he said a skua came down and actually pulled the afterbirth off the pup and consumed it immediately, leaving no trace on the beach.

The beach is noisy with fur seals, but they have quite a lot of space here, so they are not as aggressive as on some other beaches.

Anna and Helen in the tussac.

Husvik is an old whaling station. Anna picked up a sawed off rib of a great whale. "This doesn't deserve to be out and about," said Anna. "It deserves to be inside a whale." This summed up the whaling stations for me. It is such a tragedy that there are almost no whales left here. (And it's one of the reasons there are so many fur seals, because the fur seals have filled the niche formerly occupied by whales, since they eat very similar food.)

The only bit of outside news we've had in the last five weeks is that the Japanese are going after 50 humpbacks, 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales this season. They claim that they are doing research, but most of the whale meat winds up as dog food. We wish Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherds www.seashepherd.org every success this season in saving a few of these whales.

The crew of Pelagic Australis came around for happy hour and again for dessert last night.

I'd better get back to work, as there is lots to do before we head off!

For more about Seal see http://www.expeditionsail.com.