Our ship never docks. We anchor and go ashore by biosecured dinghy.
There is no eating or smoking on land and we are instructed to take nothing away except photographs and leave nothing behind, not even a bit of yellow snow.
"So don't drink too much at breakfast," grins Boris.
We are told not to get any nearer than 5m from Antarctic wildlife.
But nobody told the penguins and, although we never touch, we have delightfully close encounters, especially with the confident little red-beaked gentoos.
One passenger is allowed to get as close as he likes. He is Phil McDowell, marine biologist and penguin counter from the independent research organisation Oceanites, who is hitching a lift on our ship to monitor the penguin colonies we visit.
There have been several studies comparing regularly visited colonies with those rarely in touch with humankind.
The results are strikingly inconclusive showing more-visited colonies variously doing worse, the same and even better.
Gentoos are thriving, McDowell tells me, increasing in both number and range.