Daniel Costa at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab -- To wrap up our Antarctic adventure, here are a few last photos from our field work down south. These images were taken on the last few days at Cape Shirreff. By the way, according to Wikipedia, Cape Shirreff (62°27S, 60°47W) is " a prominent cape at the north end of the rocky cove which separates Hero and Barclay bays on the north coast of Livingston Island, in the South Shetland Islands. Named by Edward Bransfield in 1820 for Captain William H. Shirreff, at that time the British commanding officer in the Pacific. " A map's at the bottom of this blog posting.

Three gentoo penguins on their way to the penguin rookery.

A mother and pup Antarctic fur seal on the beach.

A pup giving me a good hard look.

Vertebrate from a humpback whale that stranded many years ago in one of the bays on Cape Shirreff.
A gentoo penguin feeding its chick.

A chinstrap penguin colony. A startling observation of the AMLR penguin research research is that the penguin colonies at the Cape have been declining. When I last visited the Cape in 2001, this colony was a lot larger.

The field team at the Cape, including our four Chilean colleagues and the eight-member of the US AMLR field team. All four of our Chilean colleagues and five of the AMLR team are still at the Cape. They'll remain through the end of February and will be returning home in mid-March, which is the beginning of fall at Antarctica.