November 25 and November 27, 2009

This week was Wildlife Week. After seeing my fill of dead animals (mummified seals and the penguin skeleton), this week was the week for seeing some Antarctica wildlife. And No, there are no polar bears in Antarctica.

November 25
On November 25, we took a trip to Cape Royds to do some planning for informational signs marking the Specially Protected Areas for some penguin colonies in the area. We also had a team of subcontractors with us that were using very accurate GPS tools to mark the coordinates for locations of interest for a future management plan for the area.

Cape Royds was a good 2-3 hour ride in a Piston Bulley from McMurdo Station. And the ride was more than worth it. Finally I got to see open ocean!!! (other than the blue horizon that I was able to see during the helicopter rides two weeks ago). For some reason it was comforting to see the ocean - I'm not sure how long I could live in a landlocked area...

Here's the view we first saw upon arriving at Cape Royds.

There were two researchers at the Field Camp at Cape Royds. One that has been doing research for the past 20 years or so on these colonies, that had continued from research started by his college advisor resulting in data going back 40-50 years or so... Quite a good set of long term population data.

The other researcher has been involved at this field camp for 4-5 years, but of interest was that she runs an educational outreach program that involves schools back in the States. The program among other things has a webcam, Q and A sessions, will fly a flag designed by the students at the site, has a website, and will send pre addressed postcards to the students postmarked from Antarctica. Most of the students are in grade school. There is no cost to join the program...

Check out penguinscience.com for more info or let me know if you have any questions.

Heres the outhouse door at the camp...with an appropriate cutout in the door. My only question is how do you tell if that is male or female?

This is a picture of our piston bulley and its tracks...parked at Cape Royds. We had to walk up some mini bluffs to get to the Camp and to the penguin colonies.

Picture of a skua...

We actually saw a lot of snowy petrals at Cape Royds as well. The skua resembles a large brownish seagull.

Penguin!!! Adelie.





Here's a picture of an Adelie colony spread out over the bluffs.

Adelie penguins are the primary penguin species found here, but we were lucky to have seen some Emperor penguins at Cape Royds as well. Here they are moving along the sea ice out towards the open ocean. Emperors are much larger and have a colorful band along their neck.

In this picture you can see both species of penguins heading out towards the ocean on the sea ice. The larger ones are the Emperors and the smaller ones are the Adelies.



This is a pic of a Adelie penguin egg that was just captured and began to be feasted on by some skuas. It is larger than chicken eggs, I would say it is closer to the size of a softball.

The penguins were simply awesome. Very curious towards our, the human presence. The Adelies are quite small, I want to say maybe 3 feet tall. The belly slide is funny... The Emperors are more magnificent looking. But both were so interesting to watch. Have to say this may be one of my favorite visits.

Heres a couple of videos I took of some Adelies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bVjnKfMjLo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZXljMoNtLA

At Cape Royds there is also a hut of Historic Importance that early Antarctic explorers utilized. Here's just a few random pics from inside:

Ummm, sounds tasty....

Boots.

Greens...

Piston-Bulley on the ride home.

As the summer season gets further underway, more of the sea ice has started to melt and more holes in the ice have popped up and thus the presence of Weddell seals has been much more frequent. Here's a pic of one we passed on our way home. You'll just see black logs that are just on the white snow that can't be anything other than seals, because there are no other features on the flat ice...

November 27

Wildlife Week continues. On the 27th, we took a trip out to Big Razorback Island, which was approximately 1-1.5 hours from McMurdo Station.

Here's a picture of the end of the island. The camp was out here, maybe a quarter mile from the rock/ice interchange. It was interesting to find out that there are a set of islands (Big Razorback included), that are all different shaped but are the remants of the outer ring of a former volcano...

The rock/ice interchange causes a lot of cracks and openings to form and thus a large population of Weddell seals can be found in this area. The group of scientists out here have also been involved in long term research on the population. They tag and weigh the seals here among other things.

We had attempted to make a visit out to this site earlier in the season, maybe 3-4 weeks ago, but had run into issues with our vehicle halfway there and had to turn around. So we missed when the seal pups were just being born, but we were still able to see moms and there pups...

A pup feeding.

Pup, with some of its newborn fur still scratching his/her back on the ice.

With the researchers we were able to get pretty close to the seals...The seals were very interested in us, but did not appear to feel threatened and did not threaten us. We were in the vicinity of probably 40 seals at this colony. Some of the research they are looking at is if seals from older mothers have a better survival rate. We heard males and females making sounds, calls. Its funny because some of the sounds were what you would imagine coming from a seal, but some were sounds that were quite electronic-sounding and not very natural.

It was pretty freakin' awesome this week to see the penguins and seals. Very unique experience. Only other time I can remember something like this was seeing/touching the gray whales in Baja. Being this close to sort of rare animals that are not in a zoo or a cage. Crazy, crazy, crazy...

It did remind me of how much I do miss the ocean.