Journey To the End of the Earth (Well, Almost...)

Stories from Antarctica

Saturday, February 17, 2007

When animal's attack



That thing by the boat is a Leopard Seal. An 8 foot, 600 lb leopard seal with red eyes and huge blood stained fangs. The seal had been chasing us for about 20 minutes by now. At this point, I thought he was getting too close for comfort and sped up. The seal aggressively followed. We couldn't go too fast until the fish finder was out of the water, so Sam (the guy in the picture) went to pull it out. But as he did so, he stepped on the fuel line, and the engine died. I'm imagining the scene in Jaws where the boat is sinking and the shark comes over the stern, mouth open, and eats that one dude. Julie just happened to be recording video during that moment, but I can't figure out how to put that up on the blog. Then I got angry and tried to eat the seal.

He must have felt threatened by this display, because he left shortly after.

Later that day we did some island hopping and went to a really cool island that has some infamous Skuas. The highlight of the trip was a full on sprint back the boat, hitting the ground dodging dive-bombing skuas. There were times where I was laying in a crack and I could feel the wind wake of the bird bomb on the back of my neck as it passed by. We haven't seen any krill in a week, but things remain interesting.

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