Chapter 8 : Paradise sighted

Since the weather was not appropriate to dock at South Shetland islands, we made our first landing in Antarctic peninsula at Deception island.  If anyone can describe Antarctica to you, the person has probably not been there. A strange stillness envelopes the place. No sound of wind, no sound of birds, trees or human. Standing on my deck at Deception Island, surrounded by peaks on 3 sides, the stillness is gorgeous. Its like that warm blanket on a chilly night. The whites of the ice add to the serenity and the blacks remind you of the imperfections. The combination is a beautiful poetry.

Deception island was first sighted by American sailor Nathaniel Palmer who gave it its name on account of its outward deceptive appearance as a normal island, when the narrow entrance of Neptune's Bellows revealed it rather to be a ring around a flooded caldera, formed due to large amount of magma released over a short period of time leading to collapse of the rock structure and thus creating the island.

Deception Island was a focal point during the seal hunting era in the South Shetland Island. Though it didn’t have a large seal population, it was a perfect natural harbor mostly free from ice and wind. Massive overhunting of fur seals led to near extinction of the species and Deception Island was abandoned in 1825.

The second wave of activity started in Deception Island with the advent of the whaling industry. Whales were hunted for their meat and blubber which could be turned into oil, important during the industrial revolution. It spread south into the South Shetland Islands, where the lack of shore-based infrastructure meant that the whales had to be towed to moored factory ships for processing; these needed a sheltered anchorage and a plentiful supply of fresh water, both of which could be found at Deception. The boom meant setting up of radio stations and a cemetery on the island, the largest one in Antarctica. With excessive whaling, supply was overshot and resulted in less profits, thus bringing an end to the whaling industry.

Deception Island had its brief phase of respite before British, Chilean and Argentinean armies tried to set up military bases here. The setups were twice destroyed by volcanic activities. Today, you only see remains of the whaling industry setups rusting in time and a couple of summer base

It has become a tourist destination because of its various colonies of chinstrap penguins and an opportunity to take a warm bath in the natural thermal pools.