Hello again! My name is Mensun Bound, and I am the Director of Exploration for the Endurance22 Expedition. I’ve shared some fun facts and stories about the penguins of the Antarctic with you already in my last article, and now it’s time to discuss some of the other amazing animals that call the Antarctic home.
The most in-your-face inhabitants of the Antarctic are the birds, seals and whales. To my mind, the most beautiful of these to watch are the albatross. These are huge birds with massive wing-spans of up to 3.7 meters (12 feet) that glide in low over the ocean, so close that at times their wingtips trail through the water. They have to go that low to smell and see the krill, squid, fish and plankton they love to eat. In the air they are the most elegant birds I know. They rarely flap. They just soar on the winds, but when they go ashore to nest, they suddenly lose their grace and become awkward, clunky and comic. Their natural home is the ocean and the best place to see them in flight or surface-feeding is from a ship.
In my article about penguins, I shared a story about a penguin that launched itself into my boat once in an effort to avoid the sharp teeth of a fast-swimming leopard seal.
