My trip to South America and Antarctica in January and February provided a wonderful variety of scenery and wildlife to photograph. While I've posted photos of some of the birds, the main focus of the trip, taken on land and from the deck of a cruise ship (see prior posts in the bird photos subdirectory), we also enjoyed wonderful views of the unique scenery and some non-avian wildlife, which I present here.

Fur Seals and Elephant Seals frequent the icy Antarctic, where cold currents foster lots of food. While we didn't see a lot of these pinnipeds, they did show up from time to time. This Fur Seal is shows the ears, long foreflippers, the ability to walk on all fours that demonstrate its closer relationship to Sea Lions than true seals.

I was fascinated by the iceberg that immediately reminded me of Moby Dick, the great white sperm whale in Herman Melville's whaling novel. (I cut off the other end of the iceberg to emphasize the "wholeness" I saw). While we did see Sperm Whales in the Antarctic waters, none of them were white and none were as huge as Melville's creature.

After a day of rain, snow, and fog when we first entered Antarctic waters, we were greeted by glacial, scenic views as we sailed south along the Antarctic Peninsula. I've included several photos of the beautiful but stark scenery, which is disappearing as global warming cuts back the ice fields.

Not really sure which are better swimmers, dolphins or penguins, but both were wonderful sights to behold. These Long-nosed Common Dolphins porpoised in and out of the surface of the icy waters, accompanying our ship for a while before bounding off on their own errands (presumably in search of food).

Fin Whales are the second larges whale species...after the Blue Whale. We saw several species of whale in the cold, southern waters, including a Blue Whale, Fin Whales, Humpbacked Whales, Sperm Whales, and Minke Whales. The icy waters of the Antarctic produce an abundance of krill and fish that attract the whales and other mammals and birds. While we saw a nice variety of whales during our cruise, a couple of weeks before we got there these waters were filled with over a thousand whales of varies species. That would have been fun to see. This photo shows the large, somewhat unique blow hole of the Fin Whale. A baleen whale, a Fin Whale eats up to 2 tons of food each day, taking large volumes of water into their mouths and then straining out krill and other creatures as they force the water out through their baleen. It was fun to watch for whale spouts and try to identify the whale from the spout, which varied in size and form...some being fairly compact and vertical, while others were broader and larger.

I'll probably post one or two more sets of bird photos, but hopefully you'll enjoy these even if you're not into bird photography. If you want to see penguins...see my previous post of just penguins.

jak