Moments of Magic are of course not limited to the Arctic. Also in the trips down south, we have those very special moments. In contrast to most of our Arctic trips, which start well above the Arctic Circle, do we not cross the Antarctic Circle on most of our trips to the Antarctic Peninsula. Only during the end of the season, when most sea ice has melted, we try to get that far south. Here you see the real Antarctica, dominated by ice, both enormous icebergs and dense pack ice and they may or may not allow you to go to places or get ashore. I love these real expedition trips, where you don’t really know what you will do during the day when you get out of bed.

In this case, we were stopped by dense pack ice. Not really a problem, as there were hundreds of Crabeater Seals hauling out on these floes. A small group made the mistake of getting into the water and was noticed by large type B Orca’s, the ecotype that specialises in hunting seals. They tried to avoid predation by staying as close as possible to an iceberg, but clearly, one had already been killed. A typical scene of the Deep South.