Wednesday, January 13, 2016: Anchored off St. Andrew’s Bay, South Georgia

Weather Forecast: fair start with snow showers expected later on; temperature approximately 33°F; moderate to strong breeze N-NW 25-35 knots

Today we visited St. Andrew’s Bay, home to the largest King penguin colony on South Georgia. The east-facing beach runs for about two miles and is packed with the highest concentrations of seals and king penguins we have seen to date. Fur seals by the thousands slept on the glacial ridges and frolicked along the shore. Equal numbers of mostly juvenile elephant seals lay in heaps all along the shore. The scene simply defied description. Every now and then the seals would raise their head to snarl at us, or at each other, but more often just take a peek and go back to sleep. But it was the penguins that caught my camera’s eye. I truly tried to narrow down my photos to under ten, but it was a fruitless ideal. In no particular order, here’s a tidbit of what we saw.