South Georgia

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By Mark Stratton

MAY 16, 2024

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South Georgia destination overview

You may never have contemplated the sound of 300,000 penguins. But when you hear them, it’s a cacophony unlikely to be forgotten. I got forewarning of the spectacle when the expedition vessel I was travelling on to South Georgia, Island Sky, moored overnight a nautical mile offshore of St Andrews Bay. Rugged up early morning in warm clothes out on deck, the air smelled fishy. Was the chef preparing kippers for breakfast? He likely was but this wasn’t the culprit. As I found out after breakfast when boarding a zodiac to head onshore. The guano smell of the king penguins intensified closer to land as did the rhythmic braying of this vast assemblage of flightless birds. Tens of thousands of them crowd the surf line when I disembark, a colony that stretches as far as my eye can see. I notice several of our group reduced to tears. Probably the emotion of this phenomenal wildlife spectacle, although just possibly the astringency of the pungent penguin poop.

South Georgia possesses the greatest density of wildlife on Earth. Millions of penguins, Antarctic fur seals, albatross, and elephant seals, all shoehorned onto an island 170 kilometres long. This fabulous subantarctic island is several days sailing north of the Antarctic Peninsula and 1450km south of Stanley, in the Falklands. The glaciated interior rises nearly 3000metres and was made famous by Shackleton, Crean, and Worsley’s epic traverse back in 1916 to get help for the stricken crew of the Endurance after they’d sailed to the island in high seas in a lifeboat. What makes it so rich in wildlife is an upwelling of cold South Atlantic nutrients creating a biological soup of phytoplankton that ensures the island’s mega-biodiversity is forever replenishing.

It wasn’t always such a natural paradise, however. Since being in possession of the British crown since 1775 when James Cook claimed it for King George III, it endured almost two-centuries of ruthless exploitation. First the sealers came in the late 1780s and then from 1904 CA Larsen established a devastating Norwegian whaling presence that decimated whales all the way down to Antarctica. With the closure of Leith Harbour station in 1965, whaling ended, and South Georgia became home only to a handful of scientists from British Antarctic Survey. The island began to heal.

Nowadays the main industry here is adventure cruising. South Georgia is increasingly found on Antarctic itineraries, typically on three-week trips that also includes the Falkland Islands. Zodiac transfers are allowed to key wildlife spots such as St Andrews, but all landings are wet, meaning you hop out into the shallows and wade ashore. There is no land accommodation for travellers. The old whaling station at Grytviken makes for a wildly atmospheric whaling station, and it’s where Shackleton is buried having died offshore in 1922. You can visit his grave. One of South Georgia’s must-do highlights is to walk the final part of Shackleton’s epic cross-island traverse, that nowadays ends in Grytviken.