Travels

For any of you who can’t wait, let’s get it over with. Yes, we did see “chicks on feet”. But, while the Emperors had star billing on this trip, in the end the ice really stole the show.

Chicks on Feet

Iceberg.

Ice Detail.

Moonrise.

While you’d never have to ask us twice if we’d like to go back to Antarctica, we were particularly excited by this trip because we’d have a chance to see Emperor penguin chicks sitting on their parent’s feet. Uniquely among Antarctic animals, Emperor penguins brood their chicks over the Antarctic winter. (To see the extreme conditions the penguins have to endure, get a copy of March of the Penguins on DVD. It really is amazing the creatures can even survive, let alone hatch an egg and raise a chick.)

After a trip of some 60 km across the sea ice, these Emperor penguins are just arriving at the colony to relieve their mates and to feed their chicks.

Emperor Penguins.

To see “chicks on feet” you have to get to the Antarctic in the very early spring, but few trips go to Antarctica in early October like this one did. When we crossed 60°S, it’s likely we were the only ship in the world that far south. The price to be paid for going so early is that one can expect bad weather and heavy ice, and we had both.

We travelled aboard the Russian icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov. The Khlebnikov is a modern, very powerful icebreaker, but even it couldn’t get as close to the Snow Hill Island Emperor penguin colony as had been hoped. In the end, it took a 130 km return trip aboard one of the Khlebnikov’s pair of Russian MI-2 helicopters to reach the colony. Luckily, a two-day weather window opened up allowing all the passengers to get to Snow Hill Island, then the weather closed down again.

The Kapitan Khlebnikov.

View out the helicopter’s front window as we arrive back at the ship.

My apologies to anyone on a dialup modem, but I think the best way to tell you about our trip is not to tell you, but to show you. As I look at the photos, I feel tremendously privileged to have had the opportunity to visit such a beautiful, yet savage and unforgiving place, and to have shared a few moments in the lives of some of the creatures that live there.

Sunrise, Antarctic Sound.

Brash Ice.

Cathy doing the “penguin walk”.

Surely, Emperor penguin chicks are amongst the most beautiful and most endearing of all baby animals. It would be hard to design a stuffed toy that was more appealing.

Blue Iceberg.

Snow Petrel.

Adelie Penguin.

We also saw several other kinds of penguins including these Adelies. Along with the Emperors, these are the real ice penguins, breeding far south in Antarctica.

Adelie Song.

We had some pretty impressive storms, including this one with winds around Force 8 or 9.

Here, katabatic winds are torturing the glacier’s surface and sending the snow into a frenzy.

To reach the penguin colonies other than Snow Hill Island, we travelled from the ship to shore in Zodiac inflatables. This is pretty heavy ice for a Zodiac.

A whale skull near the Polish Arctowski Station on King George Island.

While it’s impossible to tell from this photo, this Wandering Albatross has a wingspan of some 11-12 feet. True wanderers of the open ocean, these birds stay at sea and never touch land for years at a time. In a lifetime of searching for food they will travel millions of kilometres.
For those of you who might have wondered where our strange internet domain name, diomedea, came from, it’s the genus for the large albatrosses—among our favourite creatures on earth.

Iceberg.

Sundog.

P.S. My apologies for the delay in posting this entry. We’ve been travelling in Patagonia and have had some trouble accessing the internet. Our next entry should be up soon…