Antarctic Journal

Back to the Ice

2010-12-05T12:58:00.003+13:00

I'm sure we've posted photos very similar to this one in the past - it's always a magical moment, stepping out of a very dark airplane hold into the brightest and strangest environment on earth, thankful that the hardest part is over. This was Dec. 1 - everything had gone perfectly thus far. Now it is Dec. 5 and I should be at Cape Crozier... but I'm not. The wind and blowing snow are keeping the helicopters grounded, so I have an extra day to catch up on correspondence. Scott and Annie at Cape Crozier report 94mph winds there, so they are taking a hut day. Katie and Libby at Cape Royds have a little less wind, but their heater mysteriously burned through two tanks of propane in a few hours. Fortunately the third tank is behaving normally.

The days here have been typically full. I had shipped two weighbridges back from the states and they arrived in less than perfect shape. We have learned that small particles of dirt get shaken loose in shipping and end up under the loadcell inside the bridges, which makes the weight data completely unreliable. Fixing requires pealing back the rubber mat (which is glued down), taking the whole scale apart, cleaning, attaching a shim under the loadcell to give it more clearance, and then putting it all back together again. If all goes perfectly this takes about 3 hours, plus 24 hours for the glue to set up again. That on top of all the refresher courses (cold weather injuries, survival bags, helicopters, sea ice, waste management, lab safety, communications) and getting our food together for the next month required about 3 full days of effort. It isn't all bad to have a relatively easy day in the midst of this, as long as we are able to get out to field camps tomorrow!

At this point there is no internet connection whatsoever at Cape Crozier, so there may not be much updating going on again this year, at least not until I get back to McMurdo - approximately January 2.

Visiting the Emperors

2009-12-15T11:19:00.008+13:00

Scott emerges from the secret passageway to the Emperor colony

We finally finished our first complete round of band-searching through the entire Adelie colony on December 3rd. After looking at about 200,000 Adelies (and specifically, their left flippers) we were ready for our annual Emperor Penguin count. The Emperors nest on fast ice that forms in the lee between the Ross Ice Shelf and Ross Island. This year they were tucked well into a large ice canyon, about 4km walk from our hut. We found a beautiful passageway carved by wind between a long-grounded iceberg and a massive snowfield, connecting the island to the ice near the colony. We emerged in beautiful light to find 661 very healthy looking penguin chicks, attended by about 155 parents (there would have to be at least 2 x 661 parents associated with the colony this year, but most of them are at sea finding food at any given moment).

The Emperors send a scout to investigate the visitors

A big chick wonders whether any of these adults will feed it

A pair of off-duty parents take time out for a good preening

Snow Petrels

2009-12-11T10:27:00.005+13:00

Adelies and Snow Petreles rarely interact, but this one was interested in what the penguins were up to, for some reason.

This year there are a lot of Snow Petrels - every day we see at least 4, and sometimes more than 30 at once. Over the years they seem to be steadily increasing in numbers, at least as seen from Cape Crozier. But are they nesting here? We have tried several times to find them on Post Office Hill, Pat's Peak, and other seemingly likely cliff areas, with no luck.

Snow Petrels are the southernmost breeding birds, and except for humans (and humans' symbiots), the southernmost breeding animals, utilizing nunataks (snow free mountain tops and ridges exposed above the ice fields), sometimes many miles from the ocean. Apparently they project very stinky oil (i.e., they barf) at intruders to their nesting crevices, so perhaps it's just as well that we have not located them.

Incubation begins!

2009-12-10T15:34:00.003+13:00

Female Adélie Penguins looking for a good place to jump in the ocean after laying their eggs.

Clutch completion averaged 10 days late this year - November 25th instead of the usual November 15th. It was good to see all the dirty and skinny females finally get their chance to jump in the ocean and replenish reserves. They seemed pretty excited about it too. Adélies normally lay two eggs, but this year it seems the average may be just 1, which is a good plan given the late start they are getting. Perhaps because of reduced numbers of birds attempting to breed this year and the lower clutch sizes, chicks will still fledge at the normal (or even heavier than normal?) weight in February... we shall see.

Setting up the weighbridge

2009-12-09T14:20:00.003+13:00

The storm lasted until late Dec. 20th. On the 21st we set up the weighbridge (WB), which first requires that all newcomers pose with the loaded sledge at the top of the hill.

Ice conditions were perfect for delivering the sledge to the colony, 1km downhill, so the walk only took about 30 minutes (of course the sledge wanted to get there much faster than that, though not necessarily with intact contents). Setup went smoothly and within a few hours the WB was collecting data.

Because the penguins in this subcolony have been tagged with transponders, when they go through the reader coil their identities are recorded, along with their weights and the time, date, and direction (in or out) of travel. This lets us keep track of the condition of the penguins through the breeding season, as well as how much food they deliver to their chicks, and how long it takes for each foraging trip.

Mountain tents in the wind

2009-12-08T20:12:00.006+13:00

A Scott Tent in 100mph wind

We have a few choices in tents when we head out to the field - Scott Tents are the big yellow ones, and seem to do well up to about 120mph of wind - we use these more and more. Mountain tents are the more typical 4-season backpacking tents that you might find at your local outdoor store. These don't seem to handle more than 80mph before they're starting to collapse, and 100mph is definitely not good...

Mountain Tent at 80mph

Mountain Tent at 104 mph

News from Crozier

2009-11-28T07:46:00.003+13:00

From Grant:

Blogging is a little slow due to sat-phone-only internet at Crozier thus far. So, I will send a few updates to Viola and she will post them, along with suitable images from her collection from past years.

Scott, Annie and I have been here for 10 days now. The penguins have gotten a late start, and it seems that many will not attempt breeding this year. Of the ones that have started, many have only one egg, probably hedging their bets. It seems windier than usual - my tent was up for 24 hours before it was obliterated in a 105 mph gust - and we've already had several days of fieldwork with 40mph winds, which is not pleasant. But, generally things are going smoothly with our work - hoping to have the full colony surveyed for bands by this weekend.

First Minke Whales (3) yesterday!

The stormy days continue!

2009-11-22T09:54:00.005+13:00

Scott tent in a storm, Cape Crozier, 2007

I spoke to Grant via satellite phone two days ago. The Cape Crozier crew (Grant, Scott, and Annie) arrived safely on Nov. 16th & 17th and then promptly got stuck in the hut due to high winds. After four days they had only had a total of six hours in the penguin colony and one broken tent (after a 103 mph gust). The internet is not working, so there will be no direct updates for some time.

Grant says that the Crozier colony is at full capacity but the birds are breeding very late this year. Many birds had yet to lay eggs as of November 20th. Cape Royds (a smaller colony on the western side of Ross Island) is down in population by an order of magnitude - there were only 14 birds (or was it 14 pairs?) so far. Yikes! Cape Royds did very poorly during the iceberg years, and it has yet to recover.

In the meantime Cosimo and I are in Italy, living a literally opposite existence and fantasizing about Antarctica (well, just me, Cosimo doesn't know any better yet). It's dark and humid-cold here in November, but at least the food is great. Thanks to Google video chat, Cosimo now believes that "da" (daddy) lives in mamma's computer.

Snow drifting off Pat's Peak during high winds, Ross Sea visible in the distance, 2007

The Adelie penguin colony at Cape Crozier as seen from the sea ice

Stormy days in McMurdo

2009-11-15T12:58:00.003+13:00

Blowing snow partially obscures "Hotel California", the "Mammoth Mountain Inn" and Observation Hill.

We got through all the safety training courses, found and sorted all our gear, selected and packed 500+ lbs of food for Crozier, and ferried it all down to the helo pad. While we were unloading, a whiteout approached, gradually obscuring Minna Bluff, Black Island, White Island...by the time we got back to Crary Lab winds were above 40 knots and visibility was less than 1/4 mile. Time to write and analyze data! Perhaps we'll get out to field camps tomorrow...

A view from our lab window - the lab truck carrying some project's gear to the helo-pad, a PistenBully (tracked vehicle in center) is parked at the plug-in spot, many types of recycling bins line the road on the left.

Made it!

2009-11-09T21:07:00.004+13:00

Annie enjoys a change of scenery

All went smoothly this morning and we were standing on the frozen ocean of McMurdo Sound by about 3:45 this afternoon. We arrived on the warmest day of the 2009-10 Austral summer so far - about 20 degrees F, very little wind, and clear skies. Annie and Scott are exploring McMurdo before heading to snow school tomorrow morning. PenguinScience education leader Jean Pennycook is already here and has set up our lab for us. It is all so familiar, yet so strange.

Our extended stay in Christchurch provided the opportunity to watch David Ainley and Peter Young present "The Last Ocean" last night to a full house at the Christchurch Art Center. Peter has put together some beautiful video, interspersed with fantastic photos by John Weller. This came on the heels of the very sad story in Friday's news about an abandoned (illegal) 130 km gillnet set at 1500 m off the Australian sector of Antarctica (found with 29 tonnes of toothfish in it). All in all a bit overwhelming, but also motivating. We are working on a synthesis of all the available biological datasets for the Ross Sea so that we can demonstrate the unique value of this place. These datasets contain observations spanning nearly 100 years and have been provided by over 40 different project teams.

Mechanical

2009-11-06T10:27:00.004+13:00

Up at 4:30, at the Clothing Distribution Center by 5:30. Put on Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear, loaded onto world's narrowest(?) buses, drove onto tarmac and sat next to the C-17 that was to be our ride to the ice. A few minutes later we were informed that the plane had a fuel leak and we were probably not going anywhere, but we needed to wait to find out for sure. People on the sunny side of the bus started to squirm and open windows. About 45 minutes later it was confirmed - we're not going anywhere. Bags returned to us, ECW gear re-stowed, street clothes re-donned. Back at hotel by 10:00. It will probably be Monday before we try again.

A "mechanical" is when you either don't leave or you get "boomeranged" due to mechanical problems with the airplane. "Boomeranged" is when you leave the Christchurch airport, but have to return; for example, because of a mechanical or bad weather.

Scott waiting patiently on the bus.

Heading South, again...

2009-11-03T13:55:00.016+13:00

So we took a year off to have a baby (Cosimo was born Nov. 17, 2008), and now the blog is taking on a second author (i.e., me)... I head to New Zealand via Sydney tonight to begin my 13th field season studying Ross Island's Adélie Penguins. I have very mixed feelings - very much looking forward to the beauty and adventure of Crozier, but also very sad to be apart from Viola and Cosimo for 6+ weeks. Plus I'm going to have to deal with all the logistics at McMurdo without Viola's help this time. Yikes.

The reason for our Antarctic hiatus...(photo by Viola)

Wrapping Up

2008-01-25T16:45:00.000+13:00

Verdant Crozier: a lush mat of snow algae, the only green growing thing around.

Our season is coming to a close. After I wrote about the last storm we had a week of gorgeous weather - blue sky, the ocean so flat you could see whales breaking its silvery surface 3 miles offshore. After several days in the hut we had a lot to catch up on, and very little time for anything but field work, food, and the usual sound sleep (thus the paucity of journal entires). We retrieved the last of our transmitters, found two more GLS tags, searched for the few banded birds remaining in the colony, determined nest fates, counted and measured chicks, and the final big two: sledge-hauling and chick banding.

The hauling involves packing about 350 lbs of weighbridge gear onto a banana sled, tying sled ropes to the backs of our packs, pulling on our crampons, and slowly working our way up the icy, sastrugi-ridden snow slope to the hut, which sits at 870 feet above sea level at the foot of Mt. Terror. This year it was just me, Grant, and Kirsten, my first time in six seasons doing this with just three humans. Packing up the weighbridge gear takes a few hours. The hauling is a 45-minute ordeal that always reminds me of how easy we have it compared to Antarctica's early explorers, who did this every day up and down glaciers and across ice shelves in the most formidable weather. Fortunately for us the weather was calm and overcast, which saved us from overheating.

The next day we headed back to the colony with the chick corral and banded 1,000 penguin chicks - the newest cohort of known-age birds to join the study. We found the largest chicks and fitted them with metal bands around the left flipper. The banding took about six hours and gave us sore thumbs for two days. If the chicks make it past the leopard seals just off the beach and survive the vagaries of their first years at sea they will come back in 4-5 years to learn the social skills necessary for life in the colony: how to build a nest, defend a territory, distinguish between a potential mate and an intruder, copulate, hatch an egg, feed a chick. The trials are multiple, and some penguins never get it right - they are too aggressive and chase away anything that moves (including young flirts), or too meek and have trouble defending a territory against the more assertive birds. Other birds start breeding at a young age and always have a nice nest, big chicks, and a seasoned mate. Yet others seem to prefer endless copulation over the responsibilities of parenthood. We've seen perpetual loners, lasting couples, serial monogamists, and threesomes, and considering how similar males and females look it's impossible to rule out other combinations.

The following day we packed up and cleaned the hut in preparation for leaving. But on packing day it began snowing, and the snow always bodes a storm. It snowed into the next day so our helicopter to McMurdo was canceled. That was yesterday. This morning it was calm here but apparently not at McMurdo, so still no helicopter. In the afternoon the much-awaited wind arrived and is now at a galloping 60-70 mph. The pallid sky has disappeared behind a thick curtain of blowing snow, which fills every gap, chokes every orifice, and saturates the air with moisture. Our work is done, our tents are packed, and half our gear is on the helicopter pad, so all we can do is wait. We're down to canned food (no more pork tenderloin!), though fortunately we still have a good supply of dark chocolate, which is the most important food item in Antarctica.

But enough about the weather, which is stealing all the attention this season. Here are some recent favorite photos of Adelie penguins, (arguably) the most amazing birds in Antarctica.

In the colony:

Bird with a satellite tag on its back, back at his nest after a trip at sea. I watched him feed fish to his chicks for a while before retrieving the tag.

A very tired penguin.

Punk looks, dorky attitude. A molting chick sees its first human.

Two Adelies settle a dispute.

Adelies come and go along the Penguin Superhighway.

At the water's edge:

Adelies waiting at the water's edge. There was a leopard seal near the beach that day, so no one was volunteering to be first.

When there is no leopard seal everyone jumps in at once.

Jumping over a crack.

Standing on a floe.

Porpoising, a penguin's fastest mode of travel.

Penguins and mountains:

A lone penguin on the snow slope above the colony.

Two explorers climb the cornice while a skua flies overhead.

Stormy, Again

2008-01-09T17:54:00.000+13:00

View from the hut door, Kirsten's Scott tent barely visible through the white-out

This time it's a real one. Storm force winds (64-72 mph), blowing snow, zero visibility. It's been difficult to count storms this season because they come one right after the other. Front after front we've been getting pounded with gales, storms, and snow. We take weather observations twice a day, and the wind speed for the past month has been oscillating up and down like a restless animal. If you've been on this side of Antarctica this year chances are you've heard it too: it's one of the worst weather years anyone can remember. Flights to the continent have been delayed. Helicopters have been grounded. And no matter how windy it is elsewhere, Cape Crozier lives up to its reputation by always being a little bit windier. It's a hard place to get to - it's always a good idea to include several days of likely weather delays in any Crozier plan. Unless, however, you are Chris Linder and Hugh Powell, you are willing to dare history, and you try to fly from Cape Crozier to Christchurch in one day, skipping the McMurdo rigmarole altogether, which they did on December 27th. They left Crozier at 8:30 AM and by midnight they were on the dark streets of Christchurch, calling us to find out where they could get some food.

Kirsten braves the white-out to go check on her tent, then decides against it

We walk constantly at Crozier. The history of our tracks is constantly being written and rewritten on the long snow slope between the hut and the colony. Somtimes we see the eroded human or penguin tracks from a previous year compressed and shaped into raised lumps carved by the wind until they are recognizable as footsteps only by their pattern and regularity: humans have a long gait, penguins have a short, narrow gait. Fresh snow erases everything. It conceals old tracks and then reveals the new ones after a new blanket is laid. Footsteps don't lie - you can tell where everyone has walked, where they stopped and stood around, where they rubbed guano off their clothes with fresh snow (aka the "Crozier shower"), and where they wiped out over a slab of blue ice lurking beneath the fluffy stuff. You can tell where a wandering band of penguins has come up the hill, inspecting our camp while we are not here (what are those humans up to???). But wind doesn't like snow, we've decided, and after a big snow the wind always comes to scrape everything back down to blue ice.

The hardest part about storms is being hut-bound. No walking. I love walking on uneven terrain - it requires a lot of mindfulness. Here I'm reminded how little I have to think about where to place my feet in the "other world" - on city streets and groomed trails. We humans animals are no longer connected to the ground we walk on, and are now free to gape at shop windows and chat on cell phones instead. But here I must negotiate different kinds of snow, ice, big rocks, little rocks, orange lichens growing in the lee of hummocks (not to be stepped on), sleeping penguins (not to be disturbed). How slippery is that snow surface? Will that rock move? If I become distracted I will fall.

Penguins do fine in the wind. They don't tumble until the wind speeds go above 130 or 140 mph, we think, though given our own considerable disadvantage in such conditions it's difficult to evaluate just where that penguin/wind threshold is...

Old, raised penguin tracks; recent, sunken penguin tracks

Grant retracing the morning's fresh track

More on Leopold

2008-01-08T15:59:00.000+13:00

OK, you ask, how do we know it's Leopold again? So far only one has been positively identified as having been here both years, and it happens to be Leopold. I had an inkling when I saw him on December 29th - that look in his eyes, the way he came over to inspect us and then lost interest, the way he lost three penguins in a row before making a successful kill. Leopold was curious, and he was never that good at catching penguins. Definitely not as good as the huge seal we watched kill 11 in a row on Jan. 7th last year (we didn't name him - he was mean, his fat head was clearly nurtured by penguin blubber and his eyes were dark, unempathetic wells). Seals have style, and Leopold is clumsy, inquisitive, and even a little charming. OK, I may be anthropomorphizing here, but I had a definite feeling of familiarity when he looked us in the eye from beneath the ice foot.

Then Kirsten had the bright idea of comparing leopard seal headshots from the past two years. They all have unique face markings. She and Grant carefully combed through all the photos and decided that the one we called Leopold last year was indeed seen again on December 29th. He has a scar (or dimple) on the left cheek just above the edge of his lips and a circle of 8-9 dots on his lower left cheek, just below and past the edge of the mouth, with three dots in the middle. His right cheek is mostly clear of dots. Not to mention that slightly derisive smile on his face.

Here are the photos to prove it, last year (left) and this year (right). Click on the image to enlarge.

Leopold Is Back!

2007-12-30T14:39:00.000+13:00

Leopold is Cape Crozier's most prominent resident leopard seal. He patrols the beaches every day in search of unsuspecting penguins. Yesterday we watched him catch 4 in a row. The first three got away, but the fourth wasn't so lucky.

Kirsten and I were standing on the ice foot on the beach, a good 6 feet off the surface of the water, when Leopold came to check us out - he popped his head out of the water right under our feet, stared us in the eye, sniffed the air, and soon lost interest, swimming off in search of more palatable and accessible prey. Being scrutinized by a 10-foot predator was enough to raise the hair on the back of my head. I also had a keen awareness of how easily the tables could have turned had we been in the water alongside him, though I'm not sure which would be worse: -1.8 degree water or an overly curious leopard seal?

Penguins stand around for hours along the shore or at the edge of ice floes waiting for enough critical mass before taking the group plunge into the icy water. Leopard seals have trouble catching penguins in open water, and they are useless predators when hauled out, but they lurk in the water at the transition between ice and sea, or land and sea as the case may be, waiting for a disoriented penguin to slow down enough before jumping in or out. "Safety in numbers" is penguin-at-sea rule #1.

"Jump high" is rule #2. Bouncing off the ice edge and back into the water could have very dire consequences. This penguin had a hard landing, but at least he was safe from Leopold's reach.

Another Adelie undecidedly surfs a small ice chunk before diving in alone.

How Google Saved The Day In Antarctica

2007-12-26T12:40:00.000+13:00

It's been a busy week! Last week we had a second storm that kept us in for a day, and we've been playing endless catchup whenever we get a day down in the colony. Yesterday we hiked to the stone igloo, the only remaining testament to the aptly titled mid-winter journey from "The Worst Journey in The World," the tale of Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition to Antarctica in 1911. During their first winter three men (Edward Wilson, Birdie Bowers, and Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who wrote the book) set out to Cape Crozier on foot and sledge, a 70 mile journey in the dark. They endured extreme cold, frost-bite, starvation, and near-death so they could be the first to collect emperor penguin eggs from the colony at Cape Crozier. The "igloo" looks more like a ring of rocks filled with the tatters of the nearly failed expedition: penguin parts, shreds of canvas, wind-worn wool clothing, a test tube, rope, and rusted tin cans, all perfectly preserved by the Antarctic cold.

We hiked under a perfect blue sky for 2 hours. As we rose over the last knoll we noticed that a heavy fog lay ahead, concealing the spur of rocks where the three men chose to build their makeshift shelter. We were soon distracted by a multitude of rare green lichens thriving in the lee of rocks and cracks, and by the time we looked up again the fog had erased all landmarks. We walked in circles for a couple of hours but finally decided we had no idea where the igloo was when we ventured onto a snowfield and found ourselves completely suspended in white, no rocks in sight, the sky and snow merged into unified white flatness, our jackets, hats, and hair outlined in hoarfrost. Fortunately we had GPS units and a satellite phone. We needed to call someone with good computer skills and access to Google. Hugh rang up a friend and dictated the Google search terms over the shaky, time-delayed connection: "stone," "igloo," "crozier," "aspa" (for Antarctic Specially Protected Area), and "gps coordinates." Within seconds she found the prized numbers, we plugged them into Grant's GPS unit, and the five of us trudged towards our invisible goal with renewed confidence. It was only 1,000 meters from where we had made the call. Wandering in the all-concealing fog was probably not unlike what Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry-Garrard had to deal with when navigating in the dark, but we were blessed with considerably warmer temperatures and some very handy technological gadgets.

We got home at 11:30 PM. Kirsten cooked a quick, delicious dinner, and then I was so completely exhausted that I forgot to call my family in Italy, who at that same hour were just gathering for their Christmas appetizers of freshly baked focaccia, local cheeses, and salame.

Chris and Hugh are scheduled to leave today. They've been documenting their week at Cape Crozier each day with great stories and photos. Check it out here (see December 19-25).

The fog that lay ahead. Igloo spur is to the right of and below the Knoll, which rises above the fog.

Usnea and Umbilicaria, the lichens that swayed us from our path.

Chris, Hugh and Grant in the fog.

Hugh and Grant at the stone igloo.

Tattered remnants in the igloo: an emperor penguin skin, shreds of green faded canvas, an old box.

A Crowded Place

2007-12-20T14:50:00.000+13:00

Last week we had Roger, Jess, and Ryan, who made it out of Crozier just in time before a wind storm swept in and kept us indoors for 4 days. Yesterday we were joined by a team of two from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute - photographer Chris Linder and science writer Hugh Powell. They will be here for a week documenting life and penguins at Cape Crozier. You can see Chris' beautiful photography and read Hugh's Antarctic tales on the WHOI Polar Discovery site (scroll down to December 19th and after). The hut is always livelier with 5 people!

Year of the Wind

2007-12-19T08:41:00.000+13:00

Windy view from the hut (photo by Kirsten)

kat•a•bat•ic - adj. Meteorol. (of a wind or air current) moving downward or down a slope. Cf. anabatic (def. 1) [1915–20; <>

Hut day #4. The wind has been oscillating between gale force (32–63 mph) and storm force (64–72 mph) since Friday, with occasional forays into hurricane force (>72 mph). We kill time by searching for adjectives for wind: howling, blowing, whistling, blustery, raging, tearing, blasting, gusting, slashing, furious, maddening, screaming, shrieking, whooshing. From the hut it sounds like a soft whoosh, a slight whistle, a large breath through the heater vent. From the tent it howls, blows, and ululates, flapping and snapping the tent canvas like a mad animal (there are no land mammals in Antarctica, but when the wind picks up the tent ropes and fabric make sounds like small animals scurrying around the rocks just outside the tent - we call them the toothy scrapers). When you are outside you don't hear the wind as much because you're so busy trying to stand upright as it pushes you around like a top. It's been windy like this, on and off, for the past month, delaying flights, keeping people inside, and exasperating everyone. Cape Crozier, as usual, is windier than everywhere else - the katabatic winds flow down from the cold, dry polar plateau, across the Ross Ice Shelf, and past Cape Crozier virtually unhindered, pusing out the sea ice and whipping up the surface of the water into foamy whitecaps and spindrift. Penguin life is mostly unaltered - they are shaped like small, heavy torpedoes, and don;t get blown off their nests until the wind goes above 120 mph.

My favorite wind words are for things shaped by the wind: ventifacts, rocks that have been faceted, grooved, and polished by wind-driven sand; sastrugi, ridges of wind-carved snow; spindrift, spray swept by a violent wind along the surface of the sea; anemosis, a flaw in wood caused by the action of strong winds upon the tree trunk; yardang, a keel-shaped crest or ridge of rock formed by the action of the wind.

Lenticular cloud shaped like a squid, announcing high winds (photo by Grant)

Snow petrels love to fly in big winds

The Most Beautiful Place In The World

2007-12-13T14:40:00.000+13:00

I finally made it! I'm at Cape Crozier, my most favorite place in the world. Flew here on Monday with Ryan Miller, Jessica Reynolds, and Roger Hill, who are visiting for the week. Ryan and Jessica are here filming on an artists and writers grant and will fly out tomorrow. Roger runs Wildlife Computers and was here to see how we use his tags on penguins. He left yesterday. Grant and Kirsten have been here for about three weeks and already seem well-tempered by the Antarctic elements. The weather is gorgeous, penguin chicks are hatching, and the field season is in full swing! But today I am hut-bound, studying for a statistics final exam tomorrow. At least I get to listen to the skuas laughing outside instead of the San Francisco street traffic.

Roger Hill at the foot of Mt. Terror

First day, hike to the emperor penguin colony

Emperor penguin chicks

Still at McMurdo...

2007-12-07T17:27:00.000+13:00

I'm still here! Yesterday's flight was delayed until today which is delayed until tomorrow. I spoke to Grant by radio tonight and he says a storm is brewing at Cape Crozier, so I could very well be at McMurdo for another few days. This place if full of scientists, artists, geeks, world travelers, and other talented geniuses, so despite its ex-military squalor it's not such a bad place to be stuck for a few days. Between one wine bar, strange machinery, cool scientific gizmos, spectacular scenery, and a crowd of people full of interesting tales there is always some way to fill one's time here ...

Bob Zook with SCINI, the skinny ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle)

SCINI in the ice hole, ready for action

SCINI, which is operated from this workstation, spies a sea anemone under the ice.

I'm Back!

2007-12-05T20:57:00.000+13:00

I arrived at McMurdo station yesterday, a gorgeous, sunny day. We flew over an endless expanse of pack ice - floes of all shapes and sizes pushed up against each other on a flat, steely ocean. Then it was mountains, and glaciers flowing from the frozen peaks into the frozen sea, and more pack ice along the coast. We landed the giant cargo plane on the immense flat whiteness of the Ross Ice Shelf, ringed by mountains and volcanoes, with the sun moving horizontally across a truly blue sky.

McMurdo is packed to the gill - 1,100 people are here at the moment! Yet, despite so many people crowded into a small place, the town is still dwarfed by the immensity of the surrounding landscape, a tiny human speck in a place that defies all human scales. Here there is space to be, and anything superfluous becomes obvious and easy to cast aside. Life is so scarce at first glance that any evidence of it (a seal sleeping on the ice, a lichen, a sea creature showing off its bright pigments under the sea ice) is awe-inspiring, an admirable force ready for action against all odds.

I'm supposed to fly to Cape Crozier tomorrow but it's snowing like crazy. I spoke to Grant via satellite phone and he said that our tent is completely buried in big, fluffy snow. We haven't seen each other in 5 weeks and I'm itching to get there, but in typical Antarctic fashion the weather may very well keep up apart for another few days. I'm not generally superstitious, but I swear that the more you care about getting somewhere around here the greater the chances that bad weather will keep you put. It's a harsh continent, as locals are fond of reminding each other. If all goes well, I'll be at Cape Crozier withing the next 1-5 days.

On a totally different note, I just got word that Amelie and Valere, who were at Crozier with us last year, just had a baby boy. Congratulations you two! You hatched before the penguins chicks. We'll be sure to consume lots of chocolate crepes in your honor.

Off to the wine bar!

A rather fuzzy view of Antarctica...

Penguin Science

2007-03-24T11:28:00.000+12:00

See you in December 2007! In the meantime, we have been in the process of upgrading the project website. See the media section for more photos (many of which are mine) and some great new videos.

Back to "Civilization"

2007-01-29T19:42:00.000+13:00

The helicopter came for us last Friday afternoon. We were due to leave Cape Crozier on Thursday, but after two days of dazzling blue skies and above freezing temperatures we woke up Thursday morning in a cloud. Two days' worth of warm air had condensed over the cold ocean (the water here is always around -1.8 degrees C) to form a dense layer of fog. The landscape was completely erased. The air was still and silent - quite a contrast to last month's winds. I thought I could hear whales breathing, but the sound was far too regular and repetitive for a living being. The distant whoosh came from waves - a light swell from the north, not visible in the dense fog - washing up on the rocky beaches and under the ice foot at the bottom of the slope. Friday was beautiful again. The helicopter arrived, we checked the hut for forgotten items, secured the door, donned our Extreme Cold Weather gear and helmets, and within minutes the hut - our home for 2 1/2 months - was just a tiny orange speck in the Antarctic vastness of rock, ice, and snow. It's always so disorienting to leave a place that you love so much, a place that is so much a part of your body, with so little time to think and no chance to turn back. We flew past Post Office Hill, Ainley Peak, and the Knoll, along the southern edge of Ross Island where ice shelf meets land, above the rolling fields of gaping crevasses that adorn the base of Mount Erebus, through the Windless Bight, over cracks in the sea ice and turquoise meltwater pools dotted with thousands of sleeping seals, and into McMurdo Station.

Within an hour I had taken my first shower in 2 1/2 months and was standing in the middle of the galley as dozens of people swirled about with trays of food, my gaze tracking each person as they went by, while trucks and oddly shaped heavy machinery beeped outside. This transition is always overwhelming, though my initial callousness is quickly softened by the pleasure of the first hot shower, the sight of green salad, and everyone's unfaltering friendliness.

By Friday evening we (David, Jean, and Lloyd from Cape Royds, and the four of us from Crozier) were standing on the ice pier at McMurdo waiting to board the Polar Sea, a US Coast Guard icebreaker that was to take us to Beaufort Island to do some work. By midnight we were standing on the ship's bridge as minke whales and orcas spy-hopped and dove along the icebreaker channel, and by 7:30 AM the next day, after a claustrophobic sleep (military ship bunks are decidedly not spacious), we were drifting a few km SW of Beaufort Island as scores of Coast Guard deck hands lowered two small steel boats into the water. We got in, motored past ice floes bathed in gorgeous morning light and covered with penguins, and landed on the beach at Beaufort Island. We banded and measured chicks and were back on the ship by 1 PM headed back to McMurdo. It was bizarre to have a 400 foot ship with 150 military personnel aboard at our disposal - a rather decadent and odd way to travel, especially after 2 1/2 months spent with three other people in a tiny, spartan hut at the edge of Antarctica.

Yesterday was mellow. Sleeping late (on a real mattress!), catching up with email after nearly a month with limited access (our link was down most of January, thus the lack of posts), drinking wine at the coffee house, and the like. Lloyd left this morning for Christchurch and then New York. The rest of us have four more days of packing before flying back to New Zealand and then our respective homes.

Me and an Adélie penguin at Cape Crozier (photo by Lloyd Fales)

Grant making funny faces on the helicopter (self portrait by GB)

Crevasses big enough to swallow a city block (or a helicopter, as the case may be)

Seals (tiny black dots) sleeping by their breathing holes

The USCG Polar Sea approaches the ice pier

Beaufort Island and a blue hued floe

A minke whale comes up for air

An orca swims along the icebreaker channel

Beach landing with Mt. Erebus in the background

Self portrait on the icebreaker

Tales Of Wind And Snow

2007-01-04T16:12:00.000+13:00

Sastrugi - Ridges of snow formed on a snowfield by the action of the wind. Also, zastruga. [1830–40; <>

Our internet is out, so I am again attempting to post using the satellite phone, which is slower than slow. No photos this time but a story, excerpted from a letter to Camie and Jeremy that I wrote on January 1st:

“The end of 2006 finally brought us a break in the form of a storm, a classic Antarctic storm: heavy, beautiful snow for two days (we stayed in the hut and caught up on various data projects) followed by a couple of clear, decent days (we went out in the field despite the frigid breeze), one windy day (stayed in hut), a lull (went out), and then the real thing (right now).

There are two things that the Antarctic wind gods focus on: 1) blowing all the fluffy snow away in an attempt to reshape the snowfields back into wild sastrugi forms (sastrugi is a Russian word for hard, wind-carved snow) and 2) creating a lull in the middle of any storm so as to fool humans into going outside and then sneaking up on them with sudden strong winds and a white-out. The latter is exactly what happened to us today, and despite how many times it has happened before we always fall for it - the wind calms, we are happy to get out, everything looks nice, and then BAM! A heavy curtain of blowing snow moves in, the wind sneaks up from the south, the sea surface gets whipped up into a frenzied foam, and we face a 1km uphill hike back to the hut.

The lull was this morning. We woke up to semi-clear skies and good visibility so we went out, completely ignoring the barometer, which was rapidly dropping. I checked some nests and then headed over to the western end of the colony to help Grant tag some chicks. There was some wind, but it was workable. When we finished I looked up and saw the dried carcass of a South Polar skua (about the size of a gull) partially airborne and tumbling towards the ocean, and noted a few snow devils forming by the shore and swirling into the steely sea. We went our separate ways for a bit and by the time we decided it was time to go home we could barely see each other across the snowfield. I waited for Grant to join me, we donned our goggles and balaclavas, and started uphill.

With only about 10 feet of visibility and 50-60 mph winds we followed the rocks, or, rather, I followed Grant who apparently knew where he was going. I held onto the end of his pack while he led us along the boundary between rock and snow, which we knew would eventually lead us to the hut area. There were no landmarks to be seen - all was white and all looked completely flat. Only rocks, snow, and the occasional patch of blue ice indicating that we were below the rocks, where snow melts and refreezes into the sheer blue stuff. I watched my feet over the sastrugi but often failed to see a sudden drop-off because I had no depth-perception.

It was an incredible hour. I trusted Grant completely but still could not help but imagine all kinds of bad scenarios - losing the rock boundary (our only guide), heading uphill but in the wrong direction, overshooting the hut, the wind rising to 100 mph...the list goes on. Knowing that you have such little room for error definitely gets your adrenaline flowing. We stopped frequently, usually as a result of me, out of breath and needing reassurance, tugging on Grant's arm. "Grant, do you know where we are?!," "Absolutely! I know this rock. 20 more minutes and we'll be at the hut!" he yelled, though still barely audible over the loud wind, while pointing at a dark spot emerging from the wall of blowing snow. The hut, a tiny speck of bliss, was so distant and small that being in it didn’t even enter into my realm of possibilities. At one point we had to leave the line of rocks and head across a snow field to the next patch of rocks, and I was reminded of the first time I went diving and let go of the end of the rope and let my body slip into the deep blue waters beneath.

Needless to say we made it home safe and sound, welcomed by Valère and Amélie with hot tea and the smell of new year's dinner on the way. My experiences on this continent are so shockingly contradictory at times...one moment I am diving in a hostile sea of wind and blowing snow, and the next I am sipping wine, eating duck-pistachio pate from France, and sending emails from a warm hut.”

It's 2007!

2007-01-01T00:08:00.000+13:00

The new year slipped in almost unnoticed. Midnight caught us by surprise, and shortly afterwards, before most of the rest of the world has even begun the new year's festivities (we're at GMT +13, just west of the International Date Line), Valere mixed us delicious rum-lemon-sugar drinks while the wind howled outside. We shared our resolutions for the coming year and now we're getting ready for sleep, which will require getting into our extreme weather clothing, diving into the wall of wind and blowing snow surrounding the hut, and laboring our way to our respective Scott tents for the night.

Happy new year from this frozen world!

Creched chicks

Valere hiking home from the colony in the storm (photo by Amelie Lescroel)

How The Penguins Send Us Email

2006-12-31T00:27:00.000+13:00

It’s storming again. The Antarctic winds are sweeping the last of the Christmas snow seaward. The Ross Sea is a dark, hammered steel, with no sea ice save for the vivid white of the grounded bergs near shore. But mostly the thick curtain of blowing snow is concealing it all, revealing glimpses only when the wind slows and the snow settles for an instant.

I feel restless. We have piles of dark chocolate and other sweets in the hut but what can we do with all this energy when we can’t go outside?

~~~

There are 7 birds equipped with various instruments that have just returned to the colony and I am totally itching to go retrieve them, but the weather is way too unstable right now (60 mph winds and a white out) and we have a long walk to the colony and back. Hiking uphill in this wind totally sucks. You get pushed and shoved and you fall on the hard, slick snow surface and your eyes sting from the blowing snow like hard sand and you can't see a thing, though if the wind catches you by surprise you can almost always follow the rock line back to the hut. We also prefer not to pull the birds off their nests when it’s windy, especially now that the chicks are big enough to run around and out of the nest on their own (most are still a bit wobbly, with stomachs so round and fat and full of food that they mostly tumble around). We'll leave the tags on until the wind eases, hoping that this storm won’t cause the birds to abandon their nests, as they did during a particularly heavy snow storm in January 2005 when all the nests were buried in 1-2 feet of snow and the adults took the opportunity to begin their northward migrations early, along with our precious instruments.

Chicks! Small but already bottom-heavy...

An Adélie, wearing a newly equipped Splash tag and radio transmitter, preening before heading out to sea

The instruments, mostly Splash tags, tell us how deep the birds are diving and where they go while foraging for their chicks at sea. The tags communicate with Argos satellites whenever the penguins are on the water surface. The satellites then email us an automatic message with the birds’ latitude and longitude, so we essentially get emails from the penguins telling us where they are. If we are able to retrieve the tag we can also download the diving data for the entire foraging trip, so we know how deep and how frequently the birds were diving at each location (Adélie penguins can dive as deep as 150 m, though most of the birds here this season are diving to 20-70 m).

The penguins' emails arrive each day shortly after 1 PM, and we instantly process them and map them to see how far they are and how soon we can expect to see them back at the colony.

Map showing Ross Island with the three Adélie colonies (Crozier, Royds, and Bird) and the satellite positions we have received to date (December 12-29)

White All Over

2006-12-27T17:14:00.000+13:00

Pat's Peak, which is usually all dark, bare rock, shrouded in new snow. The orange box in the foreground is our survival cache, containing all essentials needed in the event that our hut burns down or blows away.

We spent Christmas day measuring penguin chicks and then the snow came – big, fluffy flakes whose highly structured geometry melts away instantly upon impact with clothes or skin, making them difficult to examine closely. The flakes hung and swirled nearly massless in the still air. It snowed like that for the whole next day, making field work nearly impossible. Amélie and Valère went out to retrieve some transmitters, but other than that the heavy snow barred any band searching (when the penguins are covered in snow the silver bands are hard to see) or attaching instruments (we use tape to attach them to the feathers and it loses its sticky properties when wet, leading to the loss of a $3,000 transmitter). Grant went skiing, disappearing into the fog bank above the hut with his skis and skins in the fresh, deep snow. Ian took a ride on the Crozier Cruiser, a contraption not unlike a snowboard but far more splintery than your standard ski slope gear. I tried sledding in a yellow bin large enough to hold a human, but it sank in the snow and didn’t slide an inch. Frozen seal blubber runners would have helped, but I doubt the bin is sleek enough for the job even if outfitted with such polar gear (not to mention the difficulty in obtaining the blubber, which, contrary to popular belief, is not easy to come by in Antarctica, despite the abundance of obliviously sleeping seals).

Today is windy, as often happens immediately after a heavy snow, leaving us with a small window of opportunity for skiing or sledding. The snow is blowing in huge billowing clouds and snow devils heading straight north and into the dark sea, where it instantly ceases to be snow and contributes ever so minutely to our rising seas. This is the second storm of the season, giving us a much needed break after nearly a full month without a day off.

Christmas eve was rather eventful as far as Cape Crozier goes. My stepmom Deborah and cousin Ben sent us a very large chunk of fresh Parmigiano Reggiano, which arrived in a well-concealed package unbeknownst to everyone else in the hut. I uncovered it on the evening of the 24^th, just before dinner, and among many squeals of joy and amazement we quickly proceeded to devour ½ of it. I used some more to make risotto with Lisa’s dried morels and saffron that I brought from home. Wow. I find the sight of fresh Parmigiano in a place where most of the food that we see is either frozen or canned (or both) is incongruous and exciting to such a large degree that I’m sure some people would conclude that I have lost my mind.

We received many other great packages from friends and family, most of them involving very good dark chocolate, warm socks, teas, and various other tasty treats. Thank you all!

Back From the Antarctic Void

2006-12-23T00:53:00.000+13:00

We’re back! Our internet has been fixed for a week and we’re busier than ever, so I have had very little time to post. We’re in the peak of our field season right now, and we seem to have barely any time left after sleeping, eating, collecting and entering data. No time to read, barely any time to ski (Grant has gone twice), and very little time for writing, which is one of my favorite things to do here. I am taking lots of photos though – I can’t give that up no matter how busy I am.

I was at Cape Royds for about 5 days at the end of November and then flew back to Cape Crozier, where there are currently five of us: Amélie, Valère, Grant, Ian, and myself. Ian is mostly working on the documentary, filming penguins and seals and ice for several hours a day. The rest of us are busy resighting banded birds (we have over 700 and counting), tracking nests, attaching transmitters, and working on our various projects: Amélie is working on her postdoc, Grant and I on our graduate projects, and Valère is busy keeping track of a large portion of the banded nests.

Big things that happened so far: Ian arrived in early December, bringing the camp population to 5, which is about as much as this little hut can handle. We all sleep in tents and use the hut only for cooking and running computers, but it’s still pretty tight in here. During storms we generally abandon the tents for fear that they will blow away, but we have yet to have any serious storms since Ian’s arrival. The chicks started hatching about three days earlier than usual, around December 6th, and they are growing fast! It seems that with the iceberg gone the penguins are having a much easier time finding food and feeding their chicks. They are fat and peeping and growing and their stomachs are taut and full of krill and fish.

Our species list to date includes (in more or less order of abundance) Adélie penguins, south polar skuas, emperor penguins, Weddell seals, orcas, snow petrels, minke whales, leopard seals, Antarctic petrels, crabeater seals, Wilson’s storm petrels, and a few unidentified whales (probably beaked). There is much more under water, but this is what we can see from our terrestrial vantage point. A short and amazing list of creatures who have adapted to one of the harshest climates on earth.

It's 2AM now and I am exhausted, so I'll leave this with a few favorite photos from the past three weeks. More soon.

An Adélie penguin giving me the "bill-to-axilla" display (a territorial statement)

A bad-ass penguin. Adélie penguins can growl quite well - this one was very good at it and nearly attacked me as I tried to squeeze by.

The all-black penguin (the only one we know of) has black-and-white mate!

A south polar skua with its chick.

Wave clouds on the horizon.

An emperor penguins checking out Grant's filming techniques

Me. Self-portrait at Cape Royds.

Amelie holding down the boxes on the helicopter pad.

Valere smiling at the view upon arriving at Cape Crozier (note our orange hut in the background).

Documenting the Documenters

2006-11-28T13:05:00.000+13:00

This year, as part of our project, we are making an educational movie about penguins. Ian and Grant have been filming a lot of footage of Adélie and emperor penguins and Weddell seals and recording sounds using equipment generously loaned by Cornell's Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds.

Here are some images of the documenters at work:

Ian filming Adélie Penguins on Beaufort Island

Grant filming on Beaufort

Grant and Ian taking in a view of the frozen Ross Sea

We have also been fortunate to cross paths with filmmaker Werner Herzog. He and cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger and musician/producer/SCUBA diver Henry Kaiser are here on an NSF artists and writers grant working on a documentary about Antarctica, or Antarctic researchers, or both (didn't elaborate).

When I first passed Herzog in the lab hallway at McMurdo I mistook him for a professor I vaguely know from Stanford University - my brain was trying to place him in the familiar realm. Thus I embarrassed myself right off the bat, though he seemed mildly flattered to be mistaken for a professor, and wanted to know what kind of research this professor does. He studies climate change; "ah, climate change! interesting subject" he said in his elegant Bavarian accent.

Yesterday Herzog and Zeitlinger came to Cape Royds to film the penguins and interview David Ainley, our project leader. Herzog sat David down on a cliff overseeing the colony and asked challenging, interesting, and increasingly personal questions. It was fully unscripted. Two humans with famously difficult personalities faced each other on a cliff overlooking the frozen sea while one mostly listened and the other spoke of the feeling of one's smallness in the face of Antarctica's vastness, his (literally) dreams of overcoming the sea and becoming a seabird biologist, penguin social and anti-social behaviors, and the notion of morphing into a penguin. I'll leave the rest up to your imagination, or you can see for yourself if and when Herzog's Antarctic footage is released.

I wish I had one of our video cameras so I could film Herzog filming us filming him ... that would have put an interesting twist in our penguin movie!

Peter Zeitlinger (filming) and Werner Herzog (middle) interviewing David Ainley at Cape Royds

David Ainley (left) and Werner Herzog with the Transantarctic Mountains in the background

Hut-bound

2006-11-24T21:24:00.000+13:00

The storm lasted a total of three days. We had barely begun to search for banded birds and GLS tags down at the colony when the storm forced the four of us inside our tiny 2-person hut. What does one do when itching to be outside yet stuck in an orange box in the middle of Antarctica with the wind raging at 70-90 mph outside? Eat, read, eat some more, make tea. Be thankful for the four walls and roof that are still standing strong. I tried to learn R, sorted through my photos, read, and played with penguin data from last year's GLS tags.

One night we tried to retrieve our sleeping bags from the tents so that we could sleep inside. The wind was so strong that I could barely make it past the corner of the hut (where the wind picks up speed) and up the 10 m to our Scott tent. I could lean into the wind but not move forward. I finally retreated to the lee of the hut and gave myself a running start, hit the wall of wind with enough momentum, and went headfirst into the oncoming blizzard. Returning to the hut with a flapping sleeping bag in my arms was equally challenging, but I clutched it with all my strength, braced my steps, and finally came around the corner of the hut totally out of control, slamming into Amélie who was about to open the door with all of her sleeping gear in her arms. We laughed and retreated into the comfort of our tiny space.

My favorite thing to do when the wind is so strong is to stand outside and let it hold me up. My mind is still tempered by the relative mildness of the temperate climate I grew up in (the climate in northern Italy is pretty uneventful by comparison), so I am still blown away by the fact that any wind can be so strong as to hold someone up or, as the case may be, blow someone away. (Rumor has it that happened once at McMurdo. I don't know how strong the wind was, but the person stepped outside and was never seen again.) This wind was definitely not strong enough for the latter, so Grant and I stood on the snow and played with how far we could lean before falling. I attained a near 45 degree angle several times before gravity took over. Even better is to lay flat on the ground, where the wind is blowing above you but not so low to the ground, and watch the snow blowing and the clouds swirling overhead from your layer of relative calm.

Our internet, of course, is dead. The WiFi repeater on top of Mt. Terror is probably covered with ice, so we have to wait for the comms shop people to fly up there to fix it, which will probably take at least a week. On November 23, two days after the storm ended, I flew to Cape Royds, the smallest Adélie colony on the western side of Ross Island, where I am spending 5 or 6 days working with David, and the internet here works great.

Some more photos from the storm:

Grant tying down the wireless dish during a lull in the storm

Amélie coming back to the hut (photo by Grant)

Streaky clouds that form at high altitude during high winds. Our wind turbine, which compensated for the lack of solar energy and kept the hut fully powered during the storm, is in the foreground.

Back to Crozier, First Storm

2006-11-17T23:34:00.000+13:00

We're finally at Cape Crozier, and this is what the view out of our hut window currently looks like:

Cape Crozier white-out

I stepped out very briefly and was immediately inundated with snowdrift swirling around me at 50 miles per hour. My camera lens was instantly coated with ice, so I quickly retreated into the heated comfort of our 30 year old hut. This hut has withstood many serious storms, especially during the dark Antarctic winter, but sometimes I wonder how many more it will last through. After particularly stormy winters we find large pebbles and small rocks lodged into the side of the hut, and the external orange paint on the windward side is almost all gone from getting pummeled with wind-borne debris since 1974. Luckily the foundation is deeply frozen into the permafrost, so our chances during this relatively mild storm are quite good.

Crozier hut window

This is a view of the actual window, encrusted with snow. On clear days this window has the most spectacular view I have ever seen - the glacier flowing down to the sea with its rocky lateral moraines, grounded tabular icebergs along the shore, a vast expanse of sea ice and bergy bits, and Beaufort Island asleep in the middle of the Ross Sea. Snow, rock, sea, and ice. Occasionally seals sleeping on the fast ice, tiny penguin dots hurrying toward the ice edge, and if we are lucky some minke whales and orcas.

Oops, our wireless link to McMurdo station just died - the antenna either blew away or is totally covered with ice, so I'll have to use the satellite phone to finish posting this, which is too slow for photos. It may be a few days before we have internet connectivity again and before I can post more photos.

It's amazing to be here again in this Crozier universe - so removed from the mundanities of the "other" life. I love looking out the window and seeing ... well, nothing at the moment. Off to a sip of Scotch, maybe a cookie, and then to brave the fierce winds for 10 meters to the tent and the cocoon of our sleeping bags.

Journey to Beaufort

2006-11-13T17:49:00.000+13:00

Beaufort scale 1. a scale of wind forces, described by name and range of velocity... 2. a scale of the states of sea created by winds of these various forces... [1855–60; named after Sir Francis Beaufort (1774–1857)]" --Random House Unabridged Dictionary

Last Thursday we flew to Beaufort Island, which lies about 100 km to the north of McMurdo station. We needed to search for banded penguins and had to go while we could still fly there - the sea ice around Beaufort is rapidly thinning and, since our helicopters cannot fly over open water, we had to take the opportunity while we could.

Katie, Dave, Ian, and Grant waiting at the helo (helicopter) hangar

A helo tech attaching a sling load to another helicopter (note the Royal Society Range along the horizon)

Inaccessible Island frozen in the fast ice (ice that is attached to the shore)

A lone tabular iceberg frozen in space

The geometry of an iceberg

Icebergs are incredibly evocative in their myriad shapes and hues of white and blue.

The ice cap over Mt. Bird

The "claw" marks are heavily crevassed areas that form over bumps and knolls in the underlying rock as the sheet of ice flows over them. Some of those crevasses are large enough to swallow a helicopter or two.

Approaching Beaufort Island, still surrounded by ice

The tabular icebergs have been frozen in place since last year. This will all be open water by mid-December. We'll get to stare at Beaufort Island from Cape Crozier for the next 2.5 months, but we may not have another opportunity to fly there.

Mark testing the ice thickness

We landed briefly a few hundred meters from the island to test the ice thickness. Mark, the helo tech, drilled a hole in the ice while the pilot kept the helicopter running - after 24 inches water gushed out of the drill hole. The ice was too thin for us to land safely (we needed at least 30 inches), so we moved on.

Over ancient bones

We couldn't find a place with ice thick enough to land near the main colony so we ended up on the other side of Beaufort Island, where there is a second, very small Adelie Penguin colony. We landed on a wide, rocky terrace that used to be occupied by Adelie Penguins up until about 30,000 years ago; its entire surface is covered with penguin bones. Our friend and colleague Steve Emslie, who studies fossil penguins, dated this colony by digging through the ancient guano and using the penguin remains that still abound.

Living penguins!

Our first penguins this season, yay! The front pair were flirting heavily and, in proper Adelie territorial manner, staring down all passers-by, such as the poor lone penguin collecting pebbles at the edge of the snow. They are probably going to lay eggs any day.

David Ainley, our fearless leader.

Dave again, looking a little less fearless...

Katie Dugger, fearless statistician and fellow penguinologist, with Barry (the pilot), Mark, and David.

Grant and Ian taking in a view of the ice-covered Ross Sea.

B15 is gone

2006-11-11T16:36:00.000+13:00

B15-J from the air

The other day when we were flying in we passed right over B15-J, the last remnant of the mega iceberg that has been blocking the three Adelie Penguin colonies on Ross Island for the last 4 years. This piece was grounded in front of Cape Crozier until a few months ago, when it finally broke loose and floated north. It has been causing all kinds of problems for the penguins because it blocked access both to the breeding colonies and to the foraging areas, so we're very excited to see how the penguins do this year without the iceberg blocking their way.

B15-J (red arrow) grounded in front of Cape Crozier (blue star) in November 2005 (left) and 200 km away in November 2006 (right).

White again

2006-11-10T18:29:00.000+13:00

We're back in Antarctica! This will be my 5th season and Grant's 11th. Our group this year consists of 10 people. Seven of us (David Ainley, Kate Dugger, Grant, myself, Ian Gaffney, Amelie Lescroel, and Valere Marsaudon) just arrived together, while three more (Jean Pennycook, Lloyd Fales and William Sladen) are coming in December and January. In addition to the usual penguin research, this year we're also filming an educational DVD about the project, which Lloyd Fales is directing and producing. Ian and Grant will be filming a lot of the footage over the next couple of months.

We arrived at McMurdo station on November 7th and are scheduled to fly to our field camps on November 15th, weather permitting. We're going through the usual debriefing, sorting, packing and making sure that we have enough supplies for the next two and half months in the field. It's an exciting and stressful time - amazing to be back in this breathtaking place, overwhelmed with all the work that lays ahead, and excited at the prospect of spending the next 10 weeks at Cape Crozier.

USAP terminal

Grant waiting at the US Antarctic Program's terminal in Christchurch, New Zealand. The red parkas strewn across the chairs are part of the ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) clothing provided by the program.

Inside the C-17

The c-17 is a military cargo plane that flies people and cargo to and from Antarctica. Our flight was loaded with telescope parts (big white structures) bound for the South Pole. The flight from Christchurch to McMurdo lasts about 5 hours, with an additional 3 hours for those going to the South Pole.

Sea ice

The C-17 has very few windows - two near the front and two near the back - so for most of the flight I was unable to see what lay below. As we neared Antarctica I became quite restless and frequently wandered up front to check for the first signs of a frozen landscape. This is a glimpse of pack ice through the low clouds. We flew over hundreds of miles of ice-covered ocean before seeing any terra firma.

Antarctic mountains

I invited myself into the cockpit to take in the stunning landscape - sea ice giving way to rugged, rocky coastline to glaciers flowing into the sea to endless mountains blanketed in snow and ice...

Sea ice runway

Approaching McMurdo, which is a research station of about 1200 people tucked into the small bay beneath the last hill (Observation Hill) in the center/background. The flat white in the foreground is all frozen sea, with the sea ice runway in the foreground. The C-17 lands on about 1.5 meters of ice, thick enough to absorb the impact of a landing cargo plane without cracking and sending us into the frozen depths of McMurdo Sound. By December the sea ice runway turns into slush or open water, so the airport has to be moved further south onto the Ross Ice Shelf, which lays between Observation Hill and White Island (left background) and stretches hundreds of miles to the south. The ice shelf is about a hundred meters thick and is strewn with crevasses and giant "rollers" of flowing ice in some areas.

Getting off the plane

See you in November 2006

2006-02-05T13:20:00.000+13:00

The Antarctic season is over! There will be more stories and photos in November 2006. In the meantime, here are a few more favorites from this year...

Adelies on the sea ice

Weddell seal on the snow slope with icebergs in the background

Weddell seal yawning and scratching

Adelies contemplating the tide crack

Emperor penguin yearling getting ready to molt

Adelie chick begging for food

Christmas hike with our Kiwi neighbors (from left: Vijay, Calum, Quanah, Grant, Dudley, and Amelie)

Leaving Crozier

2006-02-02T11:40:00.000+13:00

We had two more weeks without internet - our wireless repeater is on top of Mt. Terror, and bad weather had been keeping the solar-powered batteries too low. Our last two weeks at Cape Crozier were pretty eventful. Lisa Sheffield, who had been at Cape Royds since November, joined us for the remainder of the season, bringing the total human population to five (in a hut that fits two comfortably and four tightly) - Vijay Patil, Amélie Lescroël, Lisa, Grant, and myself. We all got along splendidly, despite the limited space. We finished the season by banding 1,000 chicks - several hours of dirty work that left our clothes once and for all covered with a solid layer of guano and our thumbs sore and callused. We also had to haul the weighbridge back to the hut, a feat that involves loading a sledge with 300lbs of gear and hauling it for 1km uphill along a big snow field, just like the old Antarctic heroes. We did this in exactly 35 minutes and 35 seconds, and didn't manage to beat last year's record of 34 minutes and 34 seconds. The rotten snow we encountered at the beginning of our climb would have slowed even the bravest and strongest of all Antarctic heroes...

Resting after hauling the sledge up the hill. Photo by Lisa Sheffield.

Cape Crozier group shot. From the left: Vijay, Grant, Viola, and Amélie sitting on the hut stoop. Photo by Vijay Patil.

Chick banding. Photos by Lisa Sheffield.

On our very last day we had a cetacean treat. Grant heard whales breathing as he was packing our tent, and then spotted a group of minke whales and another group of orcas swimming in the channel that forms between shore and B15, the giant iceberg. We had been seeing both species on a regular basis through the season, but hadn't seen any in about a week. As we all sat on the hut stoop with our binoculars we spotted yet another group, and quickly sensed that they were neither minkes nor orcas. Their dorsal fins looked similar to minke fins, but, as opposed to minkes, they swam in a tight group, surfaced frequently, and spouted each time they came up for air. We watched them for a long while. After three months of closely watching the few species of birds, seals, and whales that live in this part of the world we became accustomed to picking up even the minutest details in our observations, and these whales looked different, though subtly so. Lisa brought out a cetacean guide and her zoom lens and after a process of elimination and a closer look we settled on Arnoux's Beaked Whale, a rare species in these parts. They swam due west, and soon vanished between the tabular icebergs that lay scattered in the channel. Our attention then drifted back to the orcas. A group of a few males, several females, and a few tiny calves had made a U-turn and was making a beeline for some unknown goal. They swam very rapidly and left a long wake in the flat, shiny water. Were they pursuing a school of fish? Did they turn around to avoid being closed in by the moving iceberg? We never figured out the cause of this, but were content to watch them as they nearly cleared water each time they surfaced, their white eye patches and smoky mantles clearly visible against the black body. The weather was gloriously clear and warm, just above freezing.

Two Arnoux's beaked whales (small black specks with spouts in center-right) coming up for air along the edge of iceberg B15. Photo by Lisa Sheffield.

We finished packing, scrubbed the hut, and slept well. The next morning we got up, finished taking all of our gear to the helicopter pad, and waited. We thought we heard a helicopter several times, its rapid ta-ta-ta-ta-ta echoing off distant ice fields and rocky peaks, but it was probably the light wind humming through the hut walls. By late morning the helicopter operator radioed to say we were on a weather delay. By mid-afternoon the sea surface to the east looked troubled - small, foamy wind waves were forming just off the Ross Ice Shelf and plumes of snowdrift disappeared into the water. The sea that had been calm as a mirror just the previous day was showing signs of approaching weather. It was January 25th, and our flight was finally postponed to the following day. The next day we awoke to a near white-out and 40-50mph wind, light by Antarctic standards but strong enough to keep us inside and the helicopters grounded. The storm stayed steady for two days. On day three there was a lull and we had our last chance of going down to the colony. On day four it stormed again. Most of our gear lay half-buried in snowdrift on the helicopter pad, our pantry started looking sparse, and our once plentiful supply of chocolate dwindled to almost nothing. We read, talked, and fantasized about being stuck at Crozier for the winter. We could probably live on seal meat, but lacked any means by which we could obtain such a thing. The blades on our Swiss army knives and Leatherman supertools would barely penetrate the thick layer of seal blubber, and I questioned whether a sleeping Weddell seal would as much as feel such a minute intrusion. We finally settled on our large kitchen knife as the best candidate for this task.

I imagined Cape Crozier shrouded in darkness, the aurora australis dancing in the winter sky, the moonlit snow fields, and the brilliant southern night sky. I also imagined the raging winter storms for Crozier is, after all, one of the windiest places in this part of the world. I have never seen this place in darkness, so I had to draw upon images and descriptions of the Antarctic winter from books, drawings, and photos.

White-out from the hut entrance.

Pat's Peak shrouded in snowdrift.

Waiting out the storm. Amélie, Grant, Lisa and Vijay in the hut.

By day five the storm eased, and by mid-afternoon the ta-ta-ta-ta-ta was finally real despite the thick snow clouds still looming in the western sky. The helicopter landed in a mist of snow, which had settled in the lee of rocks during the storm and was now being kicked up by the powerful blades. It was a strange sight after 2 1/2 months surrounded with nothing but ice, ocean, rock, and thousands of penguins. Before we had the time to absorb the reality of it all we were making a wide turn over the snow slope, flying high above the hut, and drifting past the low peaks at the foot of Mt. Terror - Post Office Hill, Ainley Peak, The Knoll, all familiar and beloved landmarks. The rocky ground below was traced by snow-filled cracks that formed an irregular honeycomb pattern. I don't know how it forms but I have seen the same pattern many times around Cape Crozier and other parts of Ross Island. We flew over the huge crevasses and hummocks that form and gather where glaciers meet, traced the edge of Ross Island, crossed the Windless Bight, and finally landed at McMurdo Station in a daze. It was January 30th, and civilization greeted us with the sound of beeping trucks, overheated buildings, and fluorescent lighting. I am still disoriented. When I catch glimpses of the Royal Society Range (aka Transantarctic Mountains) between the buildings I imagine walking away from town, out on the ice, and towards the snowy peaks.

Honeycomb cracks in the ground.

Snow ridge in east Crozier.

Adelie Penguins

2006-01-18T17:11:00.000+13:00

This post was in progress when we lost our internet connection two weeks ago...

Carrying a rock back to the nest.

Adelie penguins nest along the Antarctic coastline in areas where persistent winds keep the rocks free of ice and snow. During the winter they migrate north to the edge of the winter ice, where they can still find some open water and a few hours of daylight. In spring they return to their breeding areas. The males are the first to arrive, establish territories, and build nests out of small pebbles.

Male proclaiming his territory.

Neighbors settling their territorial boundaries (bill-gaping).

Stealing a rock from the absent neighbor's nest.

The pebbles help to keep the eggs and chicks dry and warm, away from the spring thaw. They are thus considered of utmost importance, and Adelies will go to any length to collect as many pebbles as they can in as short a distance as possible. Sometimes this means stealing them directly from an unsuspecting or absent neighbor.

Adelie pair flirting.

The females arrive shortly after the males, seek out their mate from the previous year (or find a new one if the previous mate is absent), and establish a pair bond. Once paired the two are able to recognize each other by voice. Within a few days they copulate, lay 1-2 eggs, and thus begin their annual nesting cycle. The males take the first incubation shift while the females go to sea to recuperate some of the energy lost in producing the eggs. The eggs hatch within about 30 days.

A great deal of energy is spent in defending the nest from pesky intruders: neighbors who walk too close to the nest, previous occupants who try to reclaim their lost territories, skuas out looking for a meal (some skuas specialize in eating penguin eggs and chicks), and penguin biologists such as ourselves.

Adelie dispaying from its nest, "daring" me to come closer.

The sideways stare, usually followed by multiple growls. Not a good sign.

Adelies also spend a considerable amout of time preening. Healthy, well-oiled feathers help to insulate them from the cold and maintain a hydrodynamic exterior.

Adelie reaching for its preen gland.

More lichens and other things...

2006-01-15T11:35:00.000+13:00

More orange lichens...

Usnea and Umbilicaria (two lichens).

Orange lichen, and algae-covered bird vertebra.

Terrestrial life in Antarctica is limited to a few species of mosses, lichens, snow algae, mites and springtails. The lichens grow along crevices and between rocks. Some thrive where the snow melts and mixes with bird guano. Most life is in the sea or along the shore - seabirds, whales, seals, and marine invertebrates all make their living in the ocean. Some seabirds, like Adelie penguins, south polar skuas, and snow petrels, use land for nesting but are otherwise sea-bound most of the year. Emperor penguins hardly ever walk on solid ground. They nest on the sea ice and therefore spend nearly 100% of their time in or on the ocean. Weddell seals occasionally haul out on the beaches (and rarely wander further inland), though they are usually found sleeping on the sea ice or on wayward floes - dark blobs in an otherwise flat expanse of ice and shiny sea. Their torpor is almost contagious. Leopard seals breed and sleep on ice floes and sometimes work the tide cracks and ice edges in search of a penguin meal, catching unsuspectig penguins as they jump in and out of the water.

Weddell seal yearling dozing and yawning on the beach.

Colors

2006-01-14T20:43:00.000+13:00

Tonight's dinner

A few days ago a helicopter brought us a food resupply, which included one amazing, colorful box of fresh fruits and vegetables. This is one of the most unlikely sights in Antarctica, and a very welcome change from the dull, mushy, and bland world of canned and frozen goods. It's also the most colorful thing I have seen since we arrived in mid-November aside from the bright orange lichens that grow in the swales along the rocky slopes of Cape Crozier.

A lichen-encrusted rock

Tonight Grant made a delicious dinner of (frozen) halibut with fresh eggplant, peppers, and dried shiitake mushrooms, which were a gift from our friend Ben who arrived at McMurdo a few days ago and sent us some goodies on the same helicopter that brought the vegetables.

Antarctic Fog

2006-01-12T09:38:00.000+13:00

I'm back after a month of too much work, sporadic Internet (bad weather in December, which caused our solar panels to take in too little power), and a constant desire to be outside...

Grant walking in the fog

In early December we had a small storm - small by Crozier standards, with winds to 80mph - that blew away the apparently essential white plastic tube that covered our wireless antenna. A few days later Grant and I decided to go look for it out on the ice. We figured that, given the predominantly southerly winds, the tube must have blown along the kilometer-long snow field downhill and downwind of the hut and that it was either resting in the folds of some sastrugi (wind-carved snow) or lying on the fast ice (sea ice attached to the shoreline) at the bottom of the snow slope. The sky was clear and the hut was in full sun, but as we descended the slope we entered into a thick blanket of fog that lay low over the cold ocean. Our search suddenly turned from hopeful to mostly meditative, since the prospects of finding a white object on a white surface in the flat light of a dense fog bank are rather minimal. But I trudged on, marveling at the fact that Grant had totally vanished from my sight despite the fact that he was but 100m from me. He blurred in and out of view as he wove his way down the slope on this unlikely search. When we reached the bottom we stepped onto the frozen ocean with it hard, jagged, snow-covered surface keeping us from slipping on the blue ice beneath. A few hundred meters ahead lay several grounded tabular (flat-topped) icebergs. They formed a citadel in various stages of decay - ice deconstructed by wind and rearranged by the movements of larger bergs that occasionally collide with the coast, with deep gashes revealing ice's inner blue secrets. Here the fog was denser but lay in patches from which the citadel emerged. The light and the iceberg backdrop made it look like a stage in some kind of celestial theater. Then I noticed the penguins. There were hundreds of them on the fast ice heading back to the colony. They were arranged in a jagged single file and they called and grunted as they went along, some walking and some tobogganing on their bellies, using their feet to push themselves along and their flippers to steer and maintain balance. They were mostly males who had taken the first incubation shift after egg-laying, had gone out to sea on their first foraging trip, and were returning to their nests to relieve their mates once again. I sat down and watched them file by, not daring to cross their line to keep following the plastic tube's imaginary, wind-borne path, which at this point had taken on a secondary importance. Grant walked through a gap in the penguin line and continued looking for the tube in the ice folds at the foot of the citadel. I waited for another gap, crossed, and then followed the birds to the western end of the colony, where they finally fanned out as they headed for their respective nests.

Ice and penguins emerging from the fog

Adelies walking along the fast ice...

...and walking along the citadel towards the colony.

More photos from the first three weeks...

2005-12-18T22:02:00.000+13:00

Grant searching for banded birds in a sea of penguins (can you find him?); iceberg citadel in the background and the long sliver of B15-J's edge (the giant iceberg) just below the horizon.

A banded Adelie penguin (center). We have spent countless hours band searching in this colony of 250,000 breeding birds. The bands are all on the left flipper, so we get look at thousands of left flippers hoping to catch that stainless steel glimpse. The birds were all banded as chicks, so we know how old they are based on the number on the band. Once found, we monitor their nests to see if they breed successfully.

Grant catching an Adelie penguin in order to remove its GLS tag.

An Adelie penguin with a GLS tag (on its left leg) flirting with his mate. We deployed these tags last January, and they have been on the birds all winter. We have to remove them to download the data, which tell us approximately where the birds have been (in latitude and longitude) during their winter migrations. During the past three weeks we have also spent countelss hours trying to catch glimpses of the left legs of incubating birds, though we have a smaller pool to look at (20 tags in a small cluster of subcolonies, rather than searching the whole colony).

A South Polar skua flying by.

Skua landing on the snow field above the west colony, with iceberg citadel and some open water in the background.

Emperor penguins on the sea ice.

Vijay leaning into the wind and falling forward during a storm. The wind was blowing 40-50 mph.

Grant climbing over a snow cornice on the way to East Rookery.

Adelies descending the snow field above the cornice, looking for a way down.

Three Adelies on the sea ice.

Our Kiwi neighbors, Nick, Calum, and Jess, on the big rock in front of our hut. Their camp is 1.2 km away above East Rookery.

Setting up the Weighbridge

2005-12-18T17:10:00.000+13:00

Grant and Vijay setting up the weighbridge sled.

The weighbridge subcolony from above.

Adelie penguins crossing the weighbridge.

On our very first day at Crozier (November 15th) we set up the wieghbridge, which is a scale with a magnetic hoop that wieghs and identifies penguins as they walk across it. The weighbridge is the only point of access to a fenced-in nesting subcolony, so each penguin from that subcolony has to walk across it to get to its nest and back out to sea. The bird is identified via a subcutaneous pit-tag that is automatically read by the magnetic hoop, just like a penguin fast-track. The data tell us when the each bird comes in and out of the colony and how much it weighs each time, and from the weight difference we can calculate, without having to handle the bird, how much food each one is bringing back to its chicks throughout the breeding season.

Every year we have to haul the weighbridge itself, the WB computer, a big battery, and several rolls of fencing from the hut to the colony, which is 1 km downhill. We load everything on a banana sled and brave the icy snow field with our crampons, holding on to the sled with thick ropes to keep it from sliding all the way down to the sea ice. Dragging 250 lbs downhill along a snow field isn't too bad, but hauling it back up the hill at the end of season is always a good workout, especially when there is big sastrugi (wind-carved snow) in the way. Fortunately by that time, after two solid months of walking up and down the hill on a daily basis, we're in pretty good shape.

Cape Crozier

2005-12-14T01:03:00.000+13:00

We have functional wireless at last! After much fussing, and thanks to Grant's hacking abilities, we were finally able to make our wireless internet link work. Grant Ballard, Vijay Patil, and I arrived at Cape Crozier on November 15th, 2005. For the past month we have been spending endelss hours searching for banded penguins in a colony of 250,000 birds. As of today, we have resighted 560 banded known-age Adelie penguins (i.e. banded as chicks), 288 of which have active nests. Most of them were banded at Cape Crozier, though a few came from other colonies from the other side of Ross Island. The first chicks started hatching late last week. Amelie Lescroel joined us yesterday and will be staying with us through the rest of the season, until late January. It's very late at night and there is too much to write, so I will start with a few photos from our flight to Cape Crozier on November 15th.

Flying along the southern edge of Ross Island. Ice covered mountains and the Ross Ice Shelf in the distance

View of Cape Crozier from the helicopter. The red arrow indicates the location of our hut. The colony stretches for 4 km along the shoreline. The iceberg B15-J is on the left side, separated from the Ross Ice Shelf by a channel filled with pack ice and small leads of open water.

Our home!

Transantarctic Mountains

2005-11-15T20:41:00.000+13:00

Last night I left our lab at 1 in the morning. The sun was hanging low to the south and the light was filled with violet-blue-orange hues. A recent storm had left thin strands of clouds and snowdrift along the horizon, and the mountains to the west looked very striking covered in flowing glaciers and slanted sunlight, so I decided to walk out onto the sea ice just outside of town. The frozen surface of McMurdo sound strecthes westward for dozens of miles before running into the Victoria Land coast, where the Transantarctic Mountains rise directly out of the ocean and stretch all across the Antarctic continent. The flat sea ice and ring of mountains reminded me very much of Nevada's Black Rock Desert, where dry, bone-white playa lake beds gleam in the desert sun, circled by reddish peaks and streaked by passing sand storms and the occasional dust devil. Right in the middle of both of these surreal landscapes humans have brought the strangest contraptions. In the Black Rock Desert people try to break land speed records, build and burn art, and build a city once a year that vanishes completely after one week (the ephemeral Black Rock City is where Burning Man takes place). Here, in one of the harshest places in the world, people land on the frozen sea in big cargo planes, fly around in helicopters, and use strange instruments to study ice, sea, rocks, birds, sea creatures, lichens, the atmosphere, Mars (the most Mars-like environment on earth is in the nearby Dry Valleys), foraminiferans, volcanoes, and meteorites, to name a few. Between me and the big mountains, on the flat frozen sea, were five LC-130's (planes with skis that can land at the South Pole), snow mobiles, a large red and white radar dome, and a few fish huts; it seems like a small, insignificant speck of the human realm in such a vast, frozen, inhospitable, and fantastic landscape.

We're scheduled to fly to Cape Crozier at 9 tomorrow morning. If all goes as planned and the weather is good we should be in the penguin colony by the afternoon. Our wireless connection is getting installed later this week, so we'll be out of contact for a few days.

Arrival

2005-11-14T01:06:00.000+13:00

We arrived on November 7th after a 5 hour journey on a C17 (military aircraft) from New Zealand. We landed on the sea ice in front of McMurdo and were greeted by "Ivan the Terra Bus," a slow-moving vehichle with enormous tires designed to travel on ice and snow. We're at McMurdo until November 15th sorting, packing, and weighing gear and equipment to get ready for the 2 1/2 month field season. It's been a hectic week. Everything is ready to go. Tomorrow we're taking all of our stuff to the helicopter pad and, if the weather is good, we'll be seeing penguins in two days.

Ross Island From Space

2005-11-10T19:38:00.000+13:00

This is a recent image of Ross Island and vicinity taken from the MODIS Terra satellite. McMurdo station is the red star. It's on the SW tip of the island. Cape Crozier (one of our field sites and the location of the largest Adelie Penguin colony in the southern Ross Sea) is the blue star and is on the eastern tip of the island. The distance between the two stars is about 80 km. Surrounding Ross Island are sea ice to the E-NE, the Ross Ice Shelf to the E-SE, the Ross Sea to the north (filled with pack ice), and the darker brown Transantarctic Mountains to the SW, marking the coast of the continent proper. Black is open water, areas that are kept clear of sea ice by the persistent winds from the Antarctic ice cap.

Directly in front of Cape Crozier is iceberg B15-J, a remnant of what was once the larger B15. It's been rotating in place and occasionally smashing into the coastline in front of the colony since 2002, making life harder for penguins that are trying to access the colony and forage during the breeding seaosn.

First glimpse of Antarctica

2005-11-10T19:10:00.000+13:00

We have arrived!

This is our very first view of the continent as seen from the C17, a large military cargo plane used by the US Atarctic Program to transport cargo and passengers between New Zealand and Antarctica. I was looking out one of a few tiny scratched windows in the front of the aircraft when one of the "flight attendants," an Air Force man in his mid-twenties, invited me up into the cockpit for a better view. The Victoria Land coast lay beneath us in a vast expanse of snow and ice-capped peaks, wind-streaked sea ice, and an immense blue, clean sky. It was exhilarating. I watched in awe as we flew past Terra Nova Bay, Inexpressible Island, and the Drygalsky Ice Tongue, the jagged, floating tongue of a glacier that is born high in the Transantarctic Mountains and dives directly into the Ross Sea. We landed directly on the frozen sea.