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STROMNESS BAY , SOUTH GEORGIA

 

Stromness Whaling Station After breakfast on February 5, the ship sailed around to Stromness Bay. We landed a couple hundred yards from the whaling complex where in 1916 Shackleton finally reached salvation. He had endured 16 months of entrapment by the ice of the Weddell Sea and an open boat journey across the roughest waters in the world. After he landed in King Haakon Bay, he hiked across South Georgia to Stromness. Four months later, he was able to rescue the rest of the men he had left behind on Elephant Island. Fur seals on beach

 

The Stromness whaling station was established in 1912, eight years after the one in Grytviken. The whaling operation was curtailed in 1931 during the depression when oil prices dropped but the site continued to be used as a repair yard until it closed permanently in 1961. Today it is in total ruin and was off limits to us for safety reasons.

Fur Seal PupsInstead, we spent a while on the beach watching the comical antics of the fur seal pups at play. They were born between late October and early December and gather on the beaches to wait for the females to return from foraging trips. Blond fur seal pupThere were a couple blond fur seal pups among them. We learned it was not an albino as it has some pigmentation. It is a genetic variation that occurs in roughly one in every thousand pups.There did not seem to be any prejudice against his color among the rest of the seals.

 

 

For more photos of Stromness, go to Stromness Photo Gallery. To read about the next location visited, go to Jason Harbour.

 

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