Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

St. Andrews Bay, South Georgia Island

Posted at 10:05 pm, October 15th, 2004

Today’s weather was thirty-eight degrees with a cold rain, so for the majority of the day no one really felt like leaving the ship. At around four o’clock most of us headed ashore, and despite the wet and cold it ended up being well worthwhile. Another giant petrel (perhaps the same one as yesterday) came running up to me, and we played for a while — he would grab my glove while I attempted to ruffle his feathers with the other hand.

Despite having to ford a few small rivers I was able to walk the entire beach (two miles?), and on the return trip saw what has thus far been the bloodiest elephant seal fight of the trip — the two bulls fought for over ten minutes, and when it was done both had chests stained bright red with blood, the victor had a cut to the bone over his eye, and the right half of his nose had been literally torn to ribbons and was hanging on only by threads of skin. During the fight the beasts were like the titans of Greek mythology — they would rear up eight or nine feet in the air and then smash together, trying to bite each other. At intervals they got so tired that they would collapse on one another before recovering enough to continue the battle. Amazingly, after such a bloody battle a third elephant seal came in and chased off the two combatants without a fight, so in the end they had fought for nothing.

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