9. Seals

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Hydrurga is the Latin generic name for the leopard seal and there were certainly leopard seals in the water at Hydrurga Rocks. In fact, they seemed to be interested in the zodiacs and followed us into the bay and swam about off-shore for perhaps half an hour. They were no doubt there because there was a chinstrap penguin colony a few hundred metres from where we landed and the chinstraps were well aware of their presence.
There were also several dozen fur seals, their external ears being evident, which mostly lay around doing nothing unless they felt that one had encroached on their territory. Then they reared up on their flippers and barked and one could see into the surprising pinkness of their mouths.
We also saw the occasional Weddell seal in 2002 and particularly on the Weddell Sea coast in 2008. They have rounded faces with a complete lack of a neck and seem content lying about on icebergs or snow patches in their thick fur and blubber. Like the fur seals, they also seem to spend a good deal of their time lying around doing nothing, but this is something that they earn. They are the most southerly dwelling seal and live on the pack ice for most of the year where they have to keep a hole through to the water open for feeding and breathing. They do this using their teeth and in so doing probably halve their life expectancy from 40 to 20 years.
Perhaps the most stunning encounter with seals was when we disturbed a pod of crabeater seals - ‘crab’ being a corruption of the Norwegian ‘krebbe’ meaning ‘krill’ - off Hydrurga rocks. They easily kept pace with the zodiac and elegantly rose to the surface and slipped below it again. They were heading towards a small iceberg with a lagoon on it that we were also approaching and we thought that they might emerge onto it, but at the last moment they turned towards the shore and we lost sight of them. It brought home to me that, like the penguins, we were not seeing these animals in their true element. We needed to get underwater to appreciate their true elegance and grace but with a water temperature of zero degrees or less I didn't contemplate this for long.

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Photos

9.1 A leopard seal resting on an iceberg
These leopard seals were photographed near Asrtolabe Island.

9.2 Another leopard seal on an iceberg
It is presumably resting in the remains of its last meal.