Advertisement
Published: December 30th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Friday 19th
A 7am wake-up call told us the conditions made it too difficult to visit Brown Bluff, a piece of the Antarctic Continent rather than an island of. So, I fixed my eyes back to the pillow for a couple more hours. I even considered sleeping through breakfast, until I heard a scraping sound across the boat. I quickly jumped out of bed and opened the covers. I tried to pry my eyes open to see what was making the swishing sound, but it was too bright. I even counted, 1-2-3 OPEN, and couldn’t get them moving. So, I hobbled around the room looking for my sunglasses, picked them up and ran over to the window. Sure enough we were running through a thin layer of ice. And the sea was now becoming sprinkled with chunks of minivan and condo-sized ice. “Okay, I’m awake.”
After breakfast, we heard a story from a naturalist about a 1902 Swedish expedition that got separated and reunited on an island called Paulet. Roughly 10 crewmembers killed 1,000 penguins to be used for food and oil. The thought of humans coming to virgin land just to destroy it brought back nightmare of my trip to
the Galapagos. How could those explorers kill off an entire species of turtles? And here, why are they taking so many penguins?
The lecture was over and looked out the window. We had arrived at Paulet island. From this distance, the island looked very rocky. As I pulled out my binoculars to get a closer look of what might be on the island, I noticed that a vast majority of what I thought to be rocks were in fact Adele penguins (one of two penguin species only found in Antarctica). The closer we got, the more I could see the entire island was covered in penguins. And as later confirmed by the scientists on board (whose job it is to count all the penguins in the Antarctic), there were over 200,000 pairs of penguins nesting across the island.
We took a zodiac out around noon. The ride was nice, but I was too eager to get on the island to see these Adeles up close. Still, from the zodiac, we had an incredible perspective of the overall metropolis they created.
Penguins were porposing (jumping out of the water as they swim) around the island. Some were jumping on to nearby
glaciers, others heading out to the Weddell sea for a meal to bring back to the babies. Weddel Seals were napping on ice flows. Suddenly, a piercing yelp came from about 10,000 penguins. From their depths, a group of petrels emerged with a baby penguin in its claws. The petrels fought for first dibs, and tossed the lifeless fuzzball into the sea, and then back onto land.
The adult penguins were not pleased at this sight, and attacked the petrels with their beaks. As opposed to the cute and clumsy looking birds I am used to seeing on TV, this was the first time I saw a penguin look vengeful. And anyhow who wouldn’t be rooting for the fuzzy penguins over a big brown petrel? And then the petrels disappeared and the colony was back to business as usual.
As I transitioned from the zodiac onto the beach, the smell of guano really hit. But if I were to think of half a million people sitting around breeding for a day, I would think the smell would be infinitely more rich and offensive. That being said, the penguin smell was not overbearing, but a welcome sign of nature.
Walking through
the endless groups of Adeles can only be compared to walking the endless districts of Tokyo, or maybe Hong Kong. In this, I mean that you feel very conscious that you are the minority, and that while they are curious to see you, they expect you will not be there forever.
While the Adeles were very protective of their nests, some were also quite curious. I placed my point and shoot camera on the floor to see how they would react. Sure enough, one of them walked up to the camera and noticed it didn’t belong. He stood at it for a minute or so, lord knows what he thought it was useful for. At the same time, some of his friends passed by without noticing. They were probably too focused on joining the parade of penguins heading out to sea for the afternoon. But this reminded me of a similar event that happened with a US $100 bill on the streets of Tokyo. Where one person stopped to stare at it, while others ignored it an walked by; for whatever reason.
As much as I tried to take the human element out of the penguins, it was impossible. They
seemed to have adult emotions, although they waddled like toddlers taking steps toward their mommies. They seemed as curious about me as I was at them, and as I lay in the rocks along the beach, I noticed I was getting into staring contests with some of them. I could have easily been there the rest of the day.
But as I sit in the Endeavour’s library, watching the sun set over a glacier the size of Rhode Island, I get a huge kick out of seeing more groups of penguins gathered on the floating glaciers. I have not journaled about the inhospitable climate only because the howling winds are secondary to what I see as an admittedly difficult combination of solitude and life, which moves me to contemplate the Antarctic as I never expected. And for now, my interactions with the Adeles better exemplify this point. However, I suspect the type of wind we are facing fits poetically into the Antarctic story of solitude and life. But so do the rushing sea currents, which push enormous glaciers past my sea-sprayed window.
Antarctica is only just beginning to show me what no one can expect.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.109s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0572s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Chris and Nikki
Chris
This is such a cool picture!