Antarctica was amazing - a fantastic experience that definitely rates very highly in the list of coolest things that I have ever done. It's kinda hard to sum up the experience in words but the following is a letter that I sent out a month into the trip. More photos will follow soon......
3 December 2010 Hello from Cape Bird!
There is a flight coming tomorrow to bring in some Americans, so it seemed like a good opportunity to send some news out to the real world (via Nita – thanks!).
Cape Bird is a pretty amazing place. Our hut is about up on a terrace about 300 m from the coastline and we have a great view out over the sea towards the Victoria Land coast. The view is ever-changing with pack ice coming and going, depending on what the wind and currents are doing. Last night when we went to bed there was less than 5 % ice cover, while this morning we woke to find the bay almost completely filled with pack ice. I’ve been taking a series of photos from the toilet twice a day, so will be able to show you how much it changes over time.
The hut is very comfortable and similar to most field huts. We have a large kitchen, dining room, with a well-stocked pantry. This is provided you don’t want to eat anything fresh, make anything using eggs or mind eating things that are well past the use-by-date. We have a diesel fire for heating, which is great when it is working, something that it has been doing quite sporadically so far this season.
There are lots of penguins. About 35,000 Adélie penguins to be exact, plus 3 Emperors which we saw cruising past one day. We also have a lot of skuas, a few snow petrels (impossible to photograph), and Weddell and Leopard seals. We have seen some orca way off in the distance and I have heard rumours about minke whales but they have yet to appear on the horizon. We also saw a black-backed gull the other day! That pretty much sums up the wildlife (unless you count springtails but then anything you need a microscope to see doesn’t really count, right).
A polar skua surveying his larder, with the Cape Bird Ice Cap and Beaufort Island in the distance.
There is very little snow and ice at Cape Bird and it looks largely like I imagine the moon would look. Most of the rocks are volcanic, with lots of scoria and basalt (maybe??), and a few bits of granite that have been carried over by glaciers from Victoria Land. The penguins and the skuas build nests on the ground, with penguins building nests from rocks (usually stolen from the neighbour’s nest).
However, some penguins prefer alternative building materials!
And others don’t really build in the most sensible places. This frozen creek will almost definitely flood later in the season when the icecap starts to melt in the warmer weather.
At the moment, all of the birds are still sitting on eggs, with the first chick predicted to hatch about December 10th. Adélie penguins lay 1-2 eggs, with both parents incubating. One parent will remain with the eggs, while the other goes to sea for a few days to forage for fish and krill and then they switch over.
This guy is making his way back over the push ice along the edge of the sea.
The skua are always looking for a free meal and are constantly cruising the colonies looking for unguarded eggs. They will also attack and feed on chicks, often while they are still alive. Sounds pretty gruesome.
A weddell seal sunbathing on the edge of the push ice. We have only seen leopard seals from a distance but we expect to see leopard seals devouring penguins anytime soon.
While it is very rocky and moon-like out here, it is not entirely devoid of greenery. The great forests of Cape Bird contain…..
algae and moss.
We basically spend everyday walking around the colonies, looking for penguins with flipper bands. We are tagging the nests of all banded birds with cattle tags and then we follow the progress of these nests through the season. So far we have tagged about 300 nests and we still expect to find a few more. We are also setting up a fenced colony that has a weighbridge to record the weights of parents with tagged with pit tags as they come and go from the sea to try and work out how much they are feeding their chicks. We will also be catching birds and taking blood samples to look at physiology and diseases. We will find out more about this work tomorrow when the Americans arrive. We also seem to spend an inordinate amount of time doing data entry. In fact, the boys are still doing data entry and it is 10:30 pm! I’ve had a few geeking moments making the system as efficient as I can but it still seems to take forever (not helped by the fact that we have to enter it twice as the Americans use an antiquated piece of software that I have never heard of and can’t figure out a way to cheat with).
And just to prove that I have actually been doing some work, here I am out in the colony looking for banded birds.
On this day, I was wearing the following: long johns, polar fleece pants, windstopper overtrousers, thermal top, fleece jersey, fleece jacket, primaloft jacket, windstopper jacket, fleece neckwarmer, fleece windstopper hat, polypro gloves, windstopper gloves, handwarmers. It was a little bit cold.
And this was the day I decided that carrying a 60m roll of plastic garden netting was a good idea. It wasn’t. It is quite difficult to stand up with 60m of netting, let alone walk. But I made it in the end.
So all is well at Cape Bird. It has been a pretty amazing experience and I look forward to seeing the changes that occur as the season goes on. I’ll try and send out an update when the boys leave after New Years.
I hope that all is well with you all.
Have a Merry Christmas!
Amy
6 December 2010
As is often the way in Antarctica, the helo flight was cancelled due to bad weather (although it’s been nice here) and has been rescheduled for today. We’ve seen quite a change in the ice conditions over the past few days and lots of Weddell seals hanging out on the pack ice. Quite a few snow petrels too, although I still haven’t managed to actually get one in the picture frame yet. Still there is plenty of time……
