A Trip to the Southern Tip of the World
- A Trip to the Southern Tip of the World Slideshow
- Sailing the islands of Tierra del Fuego, WCS staff encounter rare albatrosses, penguins, seals & more. While humans may shy away from this lonely, windswept place, wildlife populations clearly do not.
- Canaux Australis Photo
- In December 2010, a WCS expedition crossed rough and icy seas to survey
seal and bird populations on the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, which forms the windswept tip of South America.
- ©WCS
- Penguins Photo
- The conservationists came across more than 100 southern rockhopper penguins. Further east on Argentina’s Falkland Islands, this species has declined 90 percent in the last 70 years.
- Alejandro Vila/WCS
- Glacier Photo
- A leopard seal naps on an ice floe in front of a glacier in Parry’s Fjord. Antarctica is the usual home for these penguin-loving seals.
- Alejandro Vila/WCS
- Seal Mattress Photo
- A southern elephant seal gets comfortable on a “mattress of its own kind” on a beach off Jackson Bay on the Karukinka Coast.
- Alejandro Vila/WCS
- Cliff Hanger Photo
- WCS researchers Alejandro Vila and Jorge Acevedo scale a cliff over frigid whitecaps to reach a nesting colony of black-browed albatrosses.
- Ricardo Matus
- Bird Head Photo
- The smallest colony of black-browed albatross lives within Admiralty Sound. This group of only 48 nesting pairs is also this bird’s only landlocked colony on record.
- Alejandro Vila/WCS
- Man & Bird Photo
- The conservationists checked the health of the adult black-browed albatrosses, and placed identification bands on their legs. They also marked all of the birds’ nests during the survey.
- Alejandro Vila/WCS
- Grey headed albatross Photo
- A grey-headed albatross gave the researchers a pleasant surprise, since this rare species has never been recorded in the Chilean channels.
- Alejandro Vila/WCS
- Team Seal Photo
- The expedition team named the first male elephant seal they tagged “Koy,” which means “sea” in the language of the Selk’nam, the now extinct native people of Patagonia. Researchers affixed satellite tags on seals in order to track their movement patterns.
- Alejandro Vila/WCS
- Seal Tag Photo
- A juvenile, female elephant seal, like this one here, once swam more than 5,000 miles in 228 days. Her journey illustrates why WCS conservationists are working across the Patagonian seascape to ensure the safety of these animals throughout their travels.
- Alejandro Vila/WCS