A Visit to Deception Island

It's not every day that one gets to walk in the belly of a volcanic crater filled with the ancient bones of the great giants of the sea and nearly a quarter million squawking penguins, so a most memorable day it has been! Today, the Expedition dropped anchor in one of the first centers of Antarctic's human activities: Deception Island, one of the most visited stops and truly a highlight on any tour of this extraordinary continent.

Discovered in 1820, Deception Island gets its name from the fact that the presence of a harbor is deceptive and confused the early explorers who were first convinced it must be somehow connected to the continent. The horseshoe-shaped island is actually the rim of an old volcano that erupted over 10,000 years ago. In recent years, there have been a number of violent eruptions, the last in 1970, and the island frequently is the center of seismic activity. Fortunately, we escaped the earthquakes and lava on our visit today. In the year of my mother's birth, 1928, the island was the site of the first flight in Antarctica. Today, it is one of the most popular site on the tourist circuit.

The entrance into Deception Island is a dramatic one with its narrow, treacherous opening from the sea and the rocky crags on the starboard side threatening to tear the ship's hull open with any miscalculation from the captain up in the bridge. Neptune's Window, a spectacular opening in the basalt walls of the island's rim, most likely from a pyroclastic blast many centuries ago, is so huge that only a mythical god can peek through it. As soon as we entered into the mysterious basin at Deception Island, the sound of thousands of boisterous cape petrels nesting in the high cliffs filled the air. A light, gentle snow was falling, and a colony of over 140,000 pairs of chinstrap penguins chattering and trumpeting on a rounded ridge high above us on the added yet another layer of noise and excitement to the Expedition's appearance into this unique and amazing world.

Deception Island played an important role in the early whale and sealing industries due to its relatively-northern location in Antarctica and easy access to the markets in South America and the Western World. The first thing one notices after all the initial ruckus is the presence of the remnants of a whaling base long abandoned - four towering, rusty oil silos, ramshackle buildings falling victim to time and the harsh elements and the old iron blubber boilers left behind from the age of whaling. In this pristine land of natural wonders, such unsightly human constructs are conspicuous eyesores but valuable reminders of the misuse of the history and abuse of the precious resources Antarctica has to offer.

The Zodiak ride was smooth in Deception Island's calm, protected waters - a welcome change from the bucking bronco excursions we have had to endure in the chopping water on several of our passages from the ship to shore. Once on land, I was instantly enchanted with the ebony sand slowly being covered in the white snow, the glacier-blue icebergs the size of city buses floating near the beach, the smell of acrid sulfur from the dozen or so of bubbling pools on the shoreline sending ghostly steam into the polar air and the patches of green and bright gold lichen clinging desperately to the rocky cliffs surrounded the scene. Old, weathered rowboats littered the landscape, surprisingly still in fair condition. A walk down the beach led me past fields filled with enormous whale ribs and vertebrae poking up from the sand, a tell-tale sign of the carnage that occurred on this desolate island a hundred years past.

I was walking in a graveyard of the blue whales that were once harvested in numbers reaching 30,000 or more, and a chill - not from the cold from which my trusty parka shielded me - but from the images in my mind of the suffering that these black beaches witnessed - ran up my spine. Many of the wooden frames from the outbuildings jutting from the frozen earth mimicked the skeletal remains of the giants whose remains lie buried on Deception Island, and often I would have to stop and look carefully to tell which was which.

At the end of the beach, at the southern end of the island, two Weddell seals lay lounging in the snow napping, snorting, scratching their fat bellies and seemly unconcerned about or oblivious to the presence of the human beings invading their space with cameras at the ready. The corpulent seals are not the most photogenic of subjects and try the patience of the most dedicated photographer with their extended slumber and generally lazy behavior. But this lack of showmanship allows the spectators time to clown around a little and get creative with their observations, which thankfully helped pass the time.

The much-publicized-on-board grand finale of our tour to Deception Island was the traditional "Polar Bear Plunge" (actually a misnomer in this region since polar bears are only found in the Arctic Circle and not in Antarctic) where anyone willing and brave enough to shed their protective, warm clothes could dive briefly (no pun intended) into the 2 degrees Centigrade waters of the harbor for a quick dip. Part of me was tempted to participate, but in the end my sensibility overtook my adventurous spirit. Stripping down to my underwear in bone-chilling water ultimately didn't sound appealing to me.

I stood and watched instead; bragging rights to that feat of silliness was not something I needed to add to my life's resume. Just being there was enough for me.