On this trip, we've anchored off several whaling stations, including a memorable night fleeing a storm at Prince Olav Harbour.
A dark, heavy day with the rain driving down and a howling, barking, yelping cacophony of the fur seals who have taken over the rusting remains of this short-lived whaling town. The legacy of whaling is a unique part of South Georgia's heritage and visitor experience and has several parallels with the current problems of the giant seabirds.
Before the whaling industry came the fur-sealers, arriving in the late 18th century. In just ten years they stripped South Georgia of so many fur seals that it was not profitable to return. Today there are several million fur seals, which gives some idea of the scale of the massacre. Sealing returned in subsequent periods, following recovery of fur seals numbers.
In 1881, the British Government on the Falkland Islands introduced legislation limiting the season but by 1892 fur seals were once again almost extinct on South Georgia. The fur sealing era was over; but in the 20th century a strictly-controlled elephant seal industry developed, for oil rather than for fur. This time, the controls worked and South Georgia's elephant seals were never endangered.
South Georgia's whaling industry began at Grytviken in 1905 and soon there were half a dozen whaling stations in safe harbours on the island's northern shoreline. The Prince Olaf Harbour station was active for only 20 years.
Stromness is perhaps the best known, as the place Ernest Shackleton arrived at in May 1916 with two companions, having first crossed 800 miles of the Southern Ocean from Elephant Island and than traversed South Georgia's rocky mountains to raise help for his stranded colleagues.
By the 1930s, South Georgia's land-based whale industry was in fierce competition with the pelagic whalers. Whale oil quality deteriorated if not processed promptly after killing, restricting the range of shore-based vessels.
With factory ships at sea, the pelagic industry was not restricted to the diminishing stocks of whales in South Georgia's waters, nor by British catch restrictions. Over-production of whale oil led to a worldwide price reduction in the 1930s, leading to closures. Husvik re-opened between 1945 and 1961 and only Grytviken and Leith maintained unbroken production until the end of the industry in the 1960s.
Today the whaling stations pose a dilemma for the South Georgia Government. The ones that remain are amazingly evocative places. Rusting hulks of enormous corrugated iron factory buildings, with workers quarters, the managers' house and with vast oil drums at the back of the sites for collecting the processed oil.
Smashed and battered by fierce weather and looting, the twisted, drunken-angled, often shattered remains are unsafe for visitors, with the dangers of falling sheet metal compounded by asbestos dust from decaying insulation.
At Grytviken, the buildings have been cleared away and you can wander - and wonder - at the massive industrial machinery, with rusting whaling ships beached on the shore. The feeling of the place has inevitably changed however.
Despite being within the site, it's harder to imagine Grytviken as a working, living industrial community than from looking from a distance upon the decaying, rust-red buildings and streets of, say, Husvik.
South Georgia has a special place in whaling history, yet was far from its centre. By around 1930 season, 45,000 whales were being caught, but only up to 5,000 by South Georgia's whalers. The industry shifted species from right whales in the early days to blue whales and then ending mostly on sei whales. Protection of individual species did not work and led to a global moratorium in the 1980s.
And there perhaps lies a link with the current predicament of the albatrosses and giant petrels. Unregulated maritime industries can play havoc with natural ecosystems.
There are 21 species of albatross worldwide. Today, 19 of them are in danger of extinction.
South Georgia's waters are now a whale sanctuary, but the once-common leviathans are now absent: we have yet to see one. We must not allow the same fate befall our albatrosses and giant petrels.
Through modern science and conservation work we may be better aware but there is still much work to do to secure these globally threatened birds and to allow visitors see and experience the thrill of South Georgia's albatrosses and giant petrels without harm to them or their fragile environment.