Port Lockroy – Jan. 3rd (Afternoon)

In the afternoon we went to Goudier Island and Port Lockery which is home to the British Antarctic Survey hut, museum, and gift shop.  The hut was occupied 1944-1962 by a group of nine men who would do rotations of 2.5 years.  It was restored in 1996 and is open to visitors during the summer.  The Gentoo penguin colony at this site is part of a long-term study monitoring the impact of tourist activities on penguins.  Since Port Lockery can only accommodate a certain number of people at a time and there was no zodiac cruise, half of the passengers attended a lecture about the geological history of Antarctica by the cruise geologist (he entitled his talk “4.6 billion years in 46 minutes) while the other half went to the Port.  After 1 ½ hours the groups switched.  Port Lockery is Antarctica’s only post office so we had the ability to send postcards off.  Since it’s operated by the British all the postcards go first to the Falkland Islands and then to England.

For dinner the staff moved all the dining room tables and chairs to the outside deck and we had an Antarctic BBQ outside.  They had BBQ chicken, corn on the cob, hamburgers, bratwurst, etc.  Later that night the four workers from the Antarctic Survey visited our ship.  They have no running water so they rely on cruise ships to do laundry and to shower.  They gave a little talk about how life is at the museum.  It’s only the four of them and they work there four months a years (November-February).  In the shoulder months of November and February they see about five cruise ships per week, but during the busy months they will see seven to ten ships per week.  They also get visits from people yachting in the area.  They keep busy with the upkeep of the museum, receiving visitors to the museum and gift shop, running the small post office, as well as their other job of monitoring the penguin population.  They are counting the chicks in an effort to see if tourists are effecting the penguin mating patterns and population.  For every nest of chicks there are two adults (the chick would die if even one of the parents died) so by counting the number of nests, they can ascertain the number of adults in the colony.