Motoring towards South Georgia in light Easterly winds.

If yesterday we sailed where the supposed Aurora Islands were thought to be, today the non-mythical but real Shag Rocks lay 40nm south of our current track to South Georgia.

These six small islands plus the Black Rock, 16 kilometres away from this small group, represent the westernmost extreme of South Georgia. They climb up straight from the sea in cliffs and towers topping 75 meters high.

Although some think they are the legendary Aurora Islands, whose position had been wrongly fixed a couple of times in the past where now just open ocean can be found, the first time Shag Rocks were actually charted was in 1927. It was during the renowned Discovery Investigations aboard the RRS William Scoresby, a vessel specially built and launched at the end of 1925 as a Royal Research Ship to operate in Antarctica.

She successfully sailed to these waters during the campaigns between 1923 and 1931, on a scientific long-term project both ship- and land-based. The research was especially focused on the study of oceanography; charting and mapping islands, coastlines, and sea bottoms; krill abundance and distribution; and whales and their stocks for whaling in the Southern Ocean.

The primary headquarters for the land-based investigations was built at South Georgia, in King Edward Point, during the year 1925. It was located right next to Grytviken Whaling Station, where by then, the commercial whaling fishery could provide an endless flow of whales that could be studied and sampled.

Since the beginning of the whaling in those waters, about 175,000 whales were killed and processed for their blubber. It was not until the 1960s when, due to their scarcity and conservation concerns, the hunt stopped. And nowadays, since 2012, the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands established a Marine Protected Area 200 miles wide all around the islands to protect the high levels of biodiversity of the region.

With this, and amongst many other species, whales are gradually recovering their populations and coming back to these waters.

While a few years ago it was difficult to spot them, in recent times sightings are becoming more common. Such as today, when we diverted our straight course to South Georgia on a couple of occasions when blows were seen not far. Slowly and then just with engines on idle and drifting while rolling in the still remaining large swell, Europa has a good view of several Humpback whales.

Animals that surely belong to the Southern Hemisphere subpopulation of Humpbacks that breed along the Brazilian Coast during the Antarctic winter, and migrate south now during spring and summer.