6th.February, West Falkland – blue-eyed cormorant
I was fine the next day and the weather was also fine, sunny, not so cold but very windy. I went up on the bridge and there were albatrosses gliding round the ship, which made a beautiful sight.
There was then a major problem because it proved to be too rough to use the zodiacs. The attached picture shows one being winched back into the ship with the 2 expedition leaders on board after an unsuccessful attempt.
We were not able to go on land all day and spent it just trying to photograph sea birds from the ship. The Blue-eyed Cormorants were the easiest to shoot and there were some Magellan and Gentoo penguins in the water. Their colony on a sandy spit of land called The Neck on Saunders Island could just be seen from a distance. Excursions had been planned to West Point Island and Carcass Island. At Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, there is a harbour and we should be able to make some land excursions, but we had missed an albatross colony and the rock-hopper penguins.