South Georgia: St. Andrew’s Bay – King Penguin Colony
This is the world’s largest king penguin colony, with estimate ranging between 350,000-700,000 individuals. Once you climb the hill overlooking the colony, a surreal panorama opens up – the view, the noise, the smell. It’s totally mind blowing to see so many penguins and this is only half of them, since half is fishing at see at any given moment. The colony is continuously occupied given the long and varied breeding cycle of king penguins – loads and loads of brown babies in different states of development everywhere. St Andres Bay is the holy grail of landing in South Georgia, The penguins here are among the best studied and most filmed in South Georgia. Interestingly, the vast numbers of penguin at the colony are somewhat due to global warming – the glacier behind the colony has retreated hundred of meters in recent years, opening up space for penguins to settle. In 1920s, there were only 1100 birds here.
