In the Peninsular
Trip Start
Jan 01, 2001
1
213
299
Trip End
Dec 28, 2010
Half Moon Island, Antarctica
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Anchored off Half moon Island this morning and after breakfast and the required briefings it was time for our first visit to land. On arrival we were able to see lots and lots of Chinstrap penguins, six Gentoo penguins and on Macaroni Penguin. In addition we also saw three Weddell seals, Arctic terns and Brown Skuas. It was back on board for lunch and then about 4 hours sailing to get to Deception Island, the only volcanic caldera in Antarctica. On arrival we had to negotiate Neptune's Bellows, a small break in the caldera wall which allows the ship to sail right into the bowl of the caldera. Inside we anchored in Whalers Bay and went ashore where we could see a few Gentoo Penguins, some Cape Petrels, Skuas and quite a few ruined buildings. It seems that the Norweigans set up a whaling station in 1911 that lasted until 1931. It as a very big operation with some 250 people working here. They had several very large storage and heating tanks to process the whale blubber. It seems that it was possible to put large chunks of blubber into the tanks and just use the action of thermal heating, it is still an active volcano, to obtain the oil. Several buildings still remain, as does the remains of three water boats. These boats were used to bring fresh water from the island to the large boats moored in the bay. Once the whalers stopped using the site, due to a downturn in the price of oil, the Argentinians moved in to make the buildings a research station. Around the same time the British also oved in and built a seperate research station that was in use from 1947 to 1969. As part of this station they also built an aircraft hanger in 1961. It all came to an end in 1969 after a large mudslide, again caused by volcanic activity, took out several buildings and the cemetary. Today the building have been cleaned up but are being left to rot away. After this trip it was back to the ship for the night.
