16th January - Mariel's Birthday

Today was one of the crew’s birthday so we sang Happy Birthday to her while she served us our food.

The ship traveled from the Shetland Islands further into the Antarctic during the night.

Our very busy day began with time out on the deck and the bridge looking out for whales and watching where we were heading for our day's activities. Oh and the Port Melbourne Icebergs photo shoot.

After a quick breakfast, we loaded into the Zodiacs for an amazing Zodiac cruise around the icebergs and islands.

As per yesterday we again had to go through a special bio-security process before boarding the Zodiacs.

On our Zodiac Cruise, we spotted a leopard seal, along with Skuas and many other birds. Such as the blue-eyed cormorant... as you can probably tell was very difficult to choose which photos to put in here!

The size and majesty were difficult to capture!

Back on board for lunch, whale spotting,,,

... and a short rest before heading out in the Zodiacs again for a 'long walk’ we took it easy and enjoyed the environment watching the penguins tobogganing and their funny walks. We followed a human trail through ice keeping clear of the penguin highway up a hill with great views down to the ship.

Heidi managed to capture a collision between a tabogganing and a waddling Penguin!

When we got back down again to the landing point and climbed back into the Zodiacs we were treated with a time of driving around the area to observe the whales in the area.

Back on board, a man overboard drill took place whilst we were having dinner, so we didn’t watch. We did however go out on deck and watch Laurence Goodacre do his ice swim (part of his 5 Oceans swim). He was hoping to swim the ice mile but reached about half a mile when his support team who were watching out, observed that he was at a point where they felt that it was too dangerous for him to continue.

Some of us watched the sunset

Heidi grabbed a shot of the end of a small avalanche as the sun was setting.