The Wildlife - Antarctic missive 4

I am the albatross that waits for you at the end of the earth.
I am the forgotten soul of the dead sailors
who crossed Cape Horn from all the seas of the world.
But they did not die in the furious waves.
Today they fly in my wings to eternity
In the last trough of the Antarctic winds.

- poem at Cape Horn

The Wildlife – and there was plenty of it. Mostly enormous. Except the penguins we encountered which would only have been a couple of feet high at the most. Nevertheless, they were fearless! The first ‘Antarctic Wildlife’ we came across was the birds as they swooped around the updrafts created by our ship whilst crossing the Drake Passage. Shortly after, we saw penguins and whales, then seals, all in large numbers. We would be eating in the dining room watching whales, birds and penguins either going about their business or checkin’ us out – it sure made for unique dining experiences. We’d see Humpback whales breaching and slapping their fins on the surface of the water whilst we’d be hanging out on deck. We learnt about how to identify whales by the shape and height of their blows and fins. And wondered about how on earth penguins got to the top of sheer cliffs or icebergs without the gift of flight (I think they’re all actually undercover helicopter pilots or mini superheroes who fool us all into thinking they’re rather silly with their clumsy on-land movements! There’s something going on there for sure!!!) We learnt about the food chain, and who preys on who. It’s all about survival of the fittest – Antarctica takes no prisoners.

As you’d know from my last missive, the ice was the highlight for me, so I’ll probably be lighter on words in this missive. On the other hand, that might be wishful thinking for someone who could talk underwater with her mouth full of marbles! I’ll fill out the photo captions if I have stories or comments to add. Be warned, some of the captions might be a bit lame, especially around bird species…hmmm! All pictures taken by moi, unless otherwise stated. I’ll divide these incredible critters into their own sections so it makes some kind of sense, to me at least! So, I now introduce you to our gracious hosts in this hostile land…

The Birds…

A kind of Albatross (I think). Picture taken by a highly talented passenger with a pretty good camera!

Some more Albatross, unless they’re Dodos (hey, maybe they ended up here!! Conspiracy theory???) Again, not my photo, so thanks to the talented individual who put it up on the ‘communal DVD’ for all the passengers to enjoy. Love the colours in this one.

Don’t know what these are (not doing very well am I?!), but I’m guessing they’re either Shags or Cormorants. Looks like they really enjoy sitting in their own poo whatever they are. And penguins have the reputation of being a bit goofy! Thanks again to one of the passengers on board for this beautiful shot.

Now I do know what this is! It’s a Skua! Pretty cool birds I think, but not too popular with the tourists. They attack penguin eggs and chicks y’see. Use bully-boy tactics and generally scavenge for an existence. They’re actually massive, with huge webbed feet. Had one of them swooping above my head when I was kayaking once – was a bit intimidating actually! But, they have their place here. Again, not my shot (you’ve probably gathered by now that I found it much easier to take pictures of huge blocks of ice that weren’t that into the whole ‘movement’ idea, rather than birds!).

The Penguins…

Well, with my extensive ornithological knowledge, I can confidently inform you that a penguin is indeed, a type of bird. It’s just I’m giving them their own special section, because I am now in love with them! They gave me hours of amusement and wonder, and now rate highly on my personal ‘cute’ and ‘awesome’ scales!

Before I embarked on my trip to Antarctica, I thought ‘blimin' penguins! I’m going to be sick of the sight of ‘em!’, but these endearing little creatures turned me around completely, and now I can’t get enough of them! I thought it’d be pretty cool to have one for a pet and take it for a walk down King St, Newtown! Then again, I don’t fancy getting arrested for animal cruelty, so refrained from stashing one in my luggage for my return journey. Hmmmm…

I don’t think Herman rated them at all on his ‘cute’ or ‘awesome’ scale, poor little pengies…

What outlandish beings are these? Erect as men, but hardly symmetrical, they stand all around the rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting the next range of eaves above. And truly neither fish, flesh or fowl is the penguin: as an edible, pertaining neither to Carnival nor Lent: without exception the most ambiguous creature yet discovered by man. Though dabbling in all 3 elements, and indeed possessing some rudimental claims to all, the penguin is at home in none. On land it stumps; afloat it skulls; in the air it flops…nature keeps this ungainly child hidden away at the ends of the earth.
- Herman Melville

Awe, ease up Hermy! Don’t think you’d do much better with no knees! Yes folks, when God was handing out the knees, the penguins were nowhere to be seen. That’s why they walk funny. Doesn’t help that they hold their flippers out behind them when they walk, or even RUN though – I saw so many face plants, it wasn’t funny (well, it was actually – highly amusing and bemusing all at the same time!) Can you imagine how you might walk if your feet came straight out of your hips? Weird. OK, so they’re not the best anatomical design for walking or breaking land speed records, but boy can they swim! Like little rockets they are, bombing around under water, and catapulting themselves out all the time! So cool! And they’re incredible climbers too. I mentioned in the intro how I wondered at how on earth they’d get to the top of cliffs or shear faced icebergs without being able to fly. Well, it’s just sheer determination, guts and tenacity. And hey, those enormous feet they have are actually more useful than you might think. I watched this little pengy scale about 8 metres up a really steep snowy/icy hillside in a couple of minutes – something I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to do at all. S/he used his/her claws like crampons and dug the top edge of his/her flippers into the hillside in a kind of ‘commando crawl’ all the way up! Amazing!! RESPECT!!!! You’ve probably seen them doing the same kind of horizontal movement on their bellies, when propelling themselves along the ground, but this was done up hill in a much greater degree of difficulty. What I found to be quite curious was that the pengies more often than not chose to use their cumbersome walk rather than this propulsion to get from place to place. I guess that’s one reason why I found them so endearing – I just don’t quite get them.

The reason I’ve put this shot in is I couldn’t believe how huge their feet are. Look at the size of them! The penguins we saw wouldn’t have come much above my knee in height.

OK, other stuff about penguins – a couple of rules we had to adhere to was to keep at least 5 metres away from the wildlife. If you noticed a change in behaviour, you were too close. We also had to keep away from the ‘penguin highways’, or give way to passing penguins if we did need to cross them. This is where we get into the ‘fearless’ bit. Y’see, penguins couldn’t give a toss about people. Historically, they’ve been no use to humans, so were not culled like seals and whales were, only consumed as needed. So even with adhering to the rules, penguins would come up to you and just stand there and look at you like ‘what are you doing here?’ Passengers that chose not to go on the hikes and stay put for ages would be surrounded by these little characters. No one was lonely! They’re great company! And fascinating to watch. I would watch them squabble amongst themselves as well as show great tenderness and caring for their partner and when nurturing their young. The other thing we were definitely not allowed to do was take any pebbles/stones/rocks away with us, as these are penguins’ nest building material. In 10 years, the number of people visiting Antarctica has gone from 3000 per year to 33 000. If each visitor took only one pebble as a souvenir, it would significantly affect penguin numbers, then Skuas etc etc. One small selfish gesture can have a negative impact on the eco system there. I just hope that a cap is put on the number of visitors to Antarctica pretty soon – I just don’t think humans can be trusted to that extent. Anyway, back to the penguins. One of the most beautiful examples of animal behaviour I witnessed was between a pair of nesting Gentoos. I think penguins pair for life (but find another partner if their one dies), and this pair were building or repairing their nest. One of them was sitting on their pile of stones, while the other one wandered not too far to carefully sort through some stones until the ‘just right’ one was found. S/he then brought it back to his/her partner and showed it to him/her, then placed it very gently at his/her partner’s feet for him/her to inspect for acceptance or not. If it passed quality control, it was then arranged delicately on the nest. This interaction was so gentle and loving and the mutual appreciation and tenderness between the pair was so obvious. A beautiful moment.

These are Gentoo penguins. One of the chicks is tidying his/her bedroom by moving some stones around. Although Gentoos are not my fave penguins, their chicks were. So cute!!

So, a little about the three breeds of penguins we saw on the trip. I’ll start with the Gentoos. Recognised by their orange beaks, they are the most numerous with about 300 000 breeding pairs. Their numbers are in fact increasing due to having a broader breeding period than the other two types we saw, as well as being able to breed in broader ranging conditions. These penguins can breed in both Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic conditions, and with Sub-Antarctic regions reputedly growing, so is their scope for breeding.

The orange marks on this Gentoo’s chest is from the krill it eats.

I love this shot. These cute, fluffy bottoms! Lovely colours on the adult’s tail too. The Gentoo chicks looked like they’d make great slippers or ear-muffs!

A Gentoo nesting site. I love this shot with the beautiful blues and lilacs of the glacier behind them, and the touch of colour from their orange beaks.

Another popular Gentoo nesting site is on the steps of the British base at Port Lockroy. There have been some studies done about the impact of human presence on penguin populations in Antarctica. Well, the Gentoo population at Port Lockroy was found to be doing better because of human presence. And they reckon it’s because humans would typically scare off the Skuas, so the pengies felt safer. In fact, the more prime nesting sites were those closer to the base and human activity.

Chinstraps – no guesses as to why they’re called Chinstrap penguins. Also quite plentiful in numbers. Lovely amber eyes.

One of the pengies I saw at the top of a steep climb. Who needs flight when you’ve got crampons built in to your design?

Adelie penguins – my favourites. Slightly smaller than the other two I’ve described, and your archetypal black and white penguins – no fancy stuff. Not sure why I like them so much, maybe because of their plain-ness, but with the lovely white ring around the eyes, but also because there were fewer of them. Adelie numbers are on the decline – they have a much narrower breeding period, and only breed in Antarctic conditions. Tourist boats are seeing them less and less due to having to travel further south to see them now. We were lucky to incorporate one of the few Adelie nesting sites remaining within tourists’ accessibility, at one of our most southerly points at Petermann Island. Not sure if researchers are sure about whether their numbers are in fact declining, or if it’s just that they’re being driven further south, and therefore are more difficult to find. Anyway, they’re super cute.

Charcoal coloured chicks – almost the same size as its mum/dad now.

Place your own caption!

Adelie nesting site, Petermann Island.

I’m guessing this is a penguin egg shell.

Seals

I love this photo, taken by another passenger on the ship. It brings me nicely into the next section. My seal identification abilities are about as lame as my bird ones. So will probably be relying more on nice photos.

Thanks to one of the expedition staff for this photo of an Antarctic fur seal. These are feisty characters, quite territorial and not at all afraid of chasing you down the beach at quite a speed. We were advised to keep well clear of them. We saw this one on our first landing at Desolation Island, and I think it’s the only time we encountered one on the trip. They are known as an ‘eared species’ of seal, because their ears are attached to the outside of their head, like a dog’s. Other seals’ ears are on the inside and only have holes showing on the outside. Really long whiskers!

Like the above photo, this was not taken by me and it is of a species of seal I only remember seeing at our first landing. It’s a female Elephant seal (I think). They’re moulting. Also quite territorial I think, but it’s the enormous bulls that do the chasing. Quite ferocious apparently.

I took this, but don’t know what it is! You can see it’s started to moult though, and what a beautiful silvery, velvety coat it’s leaving behind.

Pretty sure this is a Weddell seal – they were my favourites due to their cute faces and lovely mottled markings on their bellies. Nice and fat and round too. This one’s busy moulting too, and was on Desolation Island at our first landing. Look at that faaace! Beautiful!!!

Not sure what these are, but they might be Crabeaters. Named so because early explorers thought the orange stains on their bellies were from eating crabs, but that’s in fact wrong – it’s from eating krill, just like everything else in Antarctica.

Leopard seals

Bit like the penguins having their own section from the birds, I’m dedicating a special section to Leopard seals too, for similar reasons. Before going to Antarctica, I wasn’t too keen on seeing any because of their fearsome reputation, and, to be honest, was a bit scared of them – and rightfully so. They are the second top predator in Antarctica after Orcas (Killer Whales). Didn’t think I’d be drawn in by their charms, but I was wrong, again. Yes, they’re huge, yes they’re killers, yes they’re generally solitary and quite territorial, and yes, there were actually a lot of them. But it was their behaviour I found fascinating. I’d heard many years ago that seals are quite often compared to dogs with their playfulness and curiosity about people, and I found Leopard seals to be like this more than any of the other species of seals we encountered. Maybe that’s why they were more endearing than the others, because of recognisable behavioural similarities to man’s best friend.

I talked to the Marine Biologist, Jim, on board about their behaviour, and asked him if it was playfulness or assertion of their territory, and he told me this wonderful story: he said that some time before the trip we were on, he was out in a zodiac by himself, very early in the morning and it was snowing heavily. So heavily in fact that a good 6 inches of snow had built up on the sides of the zodiac in no time. A large Leopard seal appeared, and was trailing him around, checking him out. Jim thought he’d test out the ‘playfulness’ idea, made a snowball from the snow gathered from the zodiac, showed it to the Leopard seal, then threw it as you would a ball for a dog. The Leopard seal dived underwater, and popped up with the snowball in its mouth/on its nose, and tossed it back into the zodiac for another go! Jim did this for a good 5 times before they both moved on, but what an incredible story of an interaction between a huge wild animal and a human being.

But don’t be fooled, they are certainly not cute and cuddly, and should be admired from a distance!

Not one of my pics, but some of the following are ones I took of this giant, basking on an ice floe.

Here, you can see the Leopard seal’s enormous mouth in its somewhat oversized head. It’s displaying its power to us as we slowly motor past it in the zodiac.

The same one, just sharing his/her space with us.

This is a great shot taken by one of the expedition staff showing an instantly recognisable feature of Leopard seals. And that is their nostrils are on top of their snout. This enables them to cruise along and sneak up on their prey whilst staying mostly submerged. They can also stick their nostrils out of the water, just breaking the surface to have a good ol’ sniff of what’s around.

That’s what this one was doing, and I must say, that this is one time I was particularly nervous whilst kayaking. I knew of their fearsome reputation, their curiosity and territorial nature; so when you combine the three, and you’re on their patch in a plastic kayak and freezing cold waters, it’s quite unnerving! There’s a good story behind this one actually. Whenever we were kayaking, we always had a zodiac driver assigned to us to be reasonably close by in case of emergency. Our ‘designated driver’ had a real knack for attracting wildlife, and this day was no exception. He called our kayak guide on the radio to tell us to get ourselves over to where he was as he had a large Leopard seal with him that had been trailing him around in circles for about 20 minutes. And when we got there, well, even more for this huge animal to play with! Probably a female due to its size (a lot bigger than the males), this thing’s head was so huge it would not have fitted in the cockpit of our sea kayaks. We didn’t see the whole of it, but our kayak guide estimated it was about 11 feet long (approx 4 or 5 metres I think). It was seriously checking us out, coming right up to the kayaks on a number of occasions before swimming underneath two kayaks that had rafted together with its mouth wide open, then chewing on the bottom of one of them. A creature that size could easily capsize you. Presumably out of curiosity, not ‘cos it would want to eat you. In fact, Leopard seals, like most Antarctic creatures, mostly eat krill. They occasionally supplement their diet with a penguin, but they’re way more work as the Leopard seal has to skin it first before eating it. It does this by thrashing the penguin around in the water in tight circles until the flesh tears away from the skin. Quite labour intensive really. I think there’s only one recorded human death from a Leopard seal, and that was a female kayaker! She ended up in the water somehow and the Leopard seal dragged her down, possibly to play with her, where she died, presumably from a combination of shock and freezing water temperatures. Not a nice way to go, and not the type of story you want to hear whilst your in a kayak yourself in Antarctica with an enormous Leopard seal chewing the bottom of one of the kayaks! Great timing there Mr Kayak Guide! Anyway, despite all this, I ended up having respect for these mighty creatures, and even a soft spot for them. Very interesting mammals.

The Whales

Yeah, they were pretty darned cool as well, and were also responsible for giving me a heck of a fright whilst kayaking! Curious too, they like to check you out. My kayaking partner and I had become quite separated from the rest of the group, and this Minke whale took full advantage of our isolative status, and popped up about 5 metres from the front of our kayak (where I was sitting). I just about pooped my pants!! Again, a curious creature this size could easily knock you over. Needless to say, we found an extra spurt of speed to regroup with the other kayakers, who had seen our close encounter and were laughing at the expression on my face! I’ve digressed…

So, we saw a number of species of whales, mostly Minkes (pronounced Minkee, like Inspector Cleuseau’s ‘Monkey’), Fins and Humpbacks. The Humpbacks are the ‘entertainers’ of the whale world. They are the ones that jump out of the water (breaching), slap their long fins on the surface of the water, and show their tales when they dive. The patterns, colours, shapes and marks on the underside of a Humpback’s tail is unique and how you can recognise them. Therefore passengers’ photos that showed this well were able to contribute to the international database of logging Humpback identifications with clear photos of the underside of Humpbacks’ tails. Serious and professional whale spotters can recognise individual whales, and get an idea of their age, sex and migration routes. Amazing really.

Our best whale watching encounter, was possibly our last zodiac trip, where we were out for ages, and there were Humpbacks everywhere, having a good ol’ feed. They were so into their feeding that they weren’t too interested in us, and they’d come pretty close to the zodiacs when their food source (krill) travelled that way. Our Marine Biologist had given up counting them a few days before this, after our trip had smashed previous trips sighting records - he stopped counting after 112 sightings in 6 days.

A Humpback feeding close to one of our zodiacs.

This is a beautiful shot taken by another passenger. They look like Orca fins, but they’re probably not long enough to be Orcas’, and therefore I’m not sure what these are. Orcas, by the way, are actually a type of dolphin, not a whale, and they are the top predator in Antarctica. They have very sophisticated communities that develop societal and hunting systems and techniques unique to their pod. I think us humans vastly underrate their huge intelligence as we continue to pull them out of their tight knit families and put them in ‘show aquariums’ like Water World for example, for human entertainment and profit. Just looking at some extraordinary Youtube footage of the hunting techniques that they develop through the planning, practice and effective communication to pull it off when it matters, really demonstrates how highly sophisticated these mammals are. It seems that, like humans, they need to be highly stimulated intellectually in order to thrive, as well as mature socially in their pods. That can only happen in the wild, where they belong as far as I’m concerned. I reckon they’re smarter than us, and are able to live more harmoniously in this world with their differences than us lot.

A shot I took of a Humpback taking a dive. Her name’s ‘Mildred’ (nah, not really!!!)

This is a cracker, taken by someone way more talented than me.

I love this shot, as it’s got lots of Antarctic ‘bits’ in it. Signs of human activity with pengies hangin’ around, and a Humpback whale frolicking in the ‘front garden’!

Now a bit of video. I took this from the zodiac, so it’s a bit wobbly due to bobbing around and being pretty excited! It’s of a Humpback ‘bubble feeding’. What that means is that the whale releases bubbles in a large circle under the water which traps or ‘contains’ the confused krill. It then comes up through the middle of the column of bubbles its made, with its mouth wide open, and collects the trappings. Pretty cool! Enjoy...

And now here’s one that hasn’t fed for quite a while. About a hundred years in fact. Due to the extremely low temperatures, there’s little to no bacteria to break down organic material, and therefore skeletons such as these can be preserved for a very long time…

The Mighty Antarctic Krill

Again, I was surprised at how big these things are. Mislead perhaps by watching ‘Finding Nemo’, I always thought that krill were microscopic. But no, you could get a pretty good feed from throwing a bunch of these on the barbie!

This is a photo of one of the many krill washed up on the volcanic black sands of Deception Island, that was already cooked. Maybe because of swimming through warmer volcanically heated waters within Deception Island, or because of being on black sand on a pretty warm day (there was a significant heat haze noted while I was sitting on the beach). Whatever, these little critters are the be all and end all of every living creature in Antarctica, except for the sea algae on which they feed. I talked about all that in my ‘Ice’ missive, so won’t repeat. So, there we are – the Mighty Antarctic Krill is how I will salute and close this section. One to go – ‘The things I did’. See you then.