
November was a busy month for cruise vessels: eleven cruise ships visited South Georgia between the 9th and 29th, according to the South Georgia Newsletter. One cruise ship, Ortelius, reached the rarely visited South Sandwich Islands and was able to put scientist Tom Hart ashore on Saunders Island where he took soil samples and set up two camera-traps to monitor the penguin colonies.

HMS Richmond was on patrol in the South Georgia Maritime Zone at the end of September and came to anchor off Hope Point on the 27th for a three-day visit, reports the September edition of the South Georgia Newsletter.

Schedules for the coming tourist season show a significant increase in the number of ships (11%) and visitors planning to visit South Georgia, and a consequent expected increase in tourist numbers (20%), according to the latest South Georgia Newsletter July release.

Sailors from HMS Argyll followed in the footsteps of Britain’s greatest polar explorer when they recreated Sir Ernest Shackleton’s legendary trek across the snow and ice of South Georgia Island.

A small increase in cruise ship visitors to South Georgia compared to the previous season bucks the trend of the Antarctic region. In the 2011/12 season tourists to the Antarctic fell by 22%, whereas in South Georgia they increased 8%, according to the September edition of the South Georgia Newsletter.

Dutch Oceanwide Expeditions reported that 74 passengers and 21 crew members from the Antarctic expedition cruise ship MV Plancius , stranded in South Georgia have been transferred to a rescue ship and are on their way to Montevideo.

The Royal Navy Type 23 frigate HMS Montrose”, with a crew of 185 made a several days patrol visit to South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, GSSI, waters in December.

“He is my other self. I love him like a brother”. Thus Ernest Shackleton spoke of Frank Wild, his friend and fellow explorer, whose ashes are soon to be laid to rest alongside Shackleton’s at the Whaler’s Graveyard in Grytviken, South Georgia, 90 years after their last great polar venture.

Fifty one cruise visits have been booked for the current 2011/12 season in South Georgia, extreme South Atlantic, with a potential number of 6.350 visitors (were they all to be full), but with the actual figure likely to be nearer to 5.000. Two cruises “L'Austral” and “Island Sky” will be making their first ever visit to South Georgia.

Conservationists say they are pleased with early efforts to kill rats on South Georgia, in what is the biggest rodent eradication campaign in history. No-one really knows how many rats inhabit the island in the South Atlantic, but it could be millions.