It is a beautiful morning with blue skies overhead and clear waters through the scenic Gerlache Strait. The calm air provides us with a non-existent horizon; it is impossible to differentiate between sky & sea and can only be indirectly inferred from the land & ice on the water. In the distance, we spot orcas. They are rapidly approaching, and we realize they are in pursuit of a lone gentoo penguin. I hope he got to enjoy this nice weather before his entire world fell apart today.

All of us on board bond over this encounter. Each one of us walks away with an understanding of the tension and excitement on board during the ordeal – completely caught up in this penguin’s plight, as inevitable as we all knew the end would be. Much of the crew, including the captain, engineers, and galley staff, watch from all over the ship to witness the duality of nature:

• There is a young orca, new to this world & learning how to survive, being taught the intricacies of hunting. Those that are more experienced are guiding him on how to effortlessly maneuver and perform synchronized flank attacks. I don’t know much about orcas, but he seems to be a pretty good student and mimics the moves well. They practice these motions in repetition. It’s a necessary lesson for his future.
  
• There is a desperate and terrified gentoo penguin, and he has a colony somewhere. He is a living object in this lesson, and the orcas & their survival efforts can eat shit – he doesn’t want to die either. He is outnumbered and exhausted, but adrenaline (yes, birds do also produce adrenaline) fuels his ability to swim at rapid speeds and leap impressive heights – if he could make the jump into our mud room, onto our ship, and escape.

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This is a significantly condensed version of the young-orca-in-training-to-kill session. And yes, thank you, I did find the most intense royalty-free music I could find to play over it, because that was the vibe.

During the sprints back and forth from either side of the vessel, some people do fall on deck, as we were all completely enthralled in the fate of this poor penguin. Thankfully for us, there were no significant human injuries. A passenger on deck dons her swimsuit with a coat thrown over, presumably having planned to visit the ship’s hot tub, but couldn’t afford to miss the action in the time it would take to put pants on. In the distance, there is a glacier calving.

In reference to the morning of Jan 16 2026