Antarctic Inhabitants

In summer time, Antarctica is filled with life, and not just with penguins and mad scientists!

Being a rocky island, DdU has lots of little nooks and crannies for petrels to nest in. We were not allowed to go too near the nesting sights as there were chicks, but here are a few photos of snow petrels (white) and Cape petrels. These are about the size of a pigeon, and are not a big threat to anyone.

This, however, can not be said of the skuas who also inhabit the islands. These birds are really big, and really are not very nice. They mostly eat carcasses, but tend to have a rather lax definition of being dead. They also are kind of lazy, so will usually eat only the bottom half of a penguin, and leave the rest strewn around the rocks. They also have nests in the rocks, but instead of simply warning you that you have come too close will dive-bomb you from behind and attempt to scalp you instead.

Other birds that kind of look like skuas are the giant petrels. We saw these off and on during the campaign, but the most marking were the hundred or so that decided to sit around behind the boat for the whole time we were sampling. They come in white and brown, although nobody really knows why. I guess as they're one of the top predators, noone has dared ask. These birds are, historically, even more awful than skuas, but the ones we had weren't doing much of anything, and so were quite acceptable.

We also saw a few Albatros, but only close to Tasmania.

As well as birds, the Antarctic is also noted for it's marine mammals, and we saw our fare share of those, too.

The most impressive were the humpback whales, of which we saw a great deal. There were also a few killer whale sightings, but never when I was on the bridge, so I won't speak of those. The Whale Watcher group wished to take tissue samples from the whales, which meant we got to go right up close. The best group we got close to was a mother and her 6-month old 'baby'. It was an amazing experience, as they were obviously undisturbed by the boat, and the baby was having a huge amount of fun, rolling belly up, and zooming under his mother, etc...

Another wonderful encounter, but this time back at DdU, was the Weddell seal that decided to plop down on the ice right next to the ship. We had seen others before, but quite a long way away, and so this was a nice final gift.

Another nice final gift, but this time of the whole trip, was the huge group of dolphins we met right outside Hobart.

A magnificent moment, to make this an unforgettable trip.

How hard it will be to go back to a 'normal' life on Monday!

Oceanographic Campaign

Icefish

I would like to remind everyone that my trip to Antarctica was not (only) for fun!

So after a few delays due to the weather, and after finally finding all our crates and containers on the Lion, we started out on the campaign.

The main lab container, with the disassembled IKMT net in front.

Our main working ground was the rear of the water-level deck, used mainly for cargo transport, and called the garage. This has a large overhead panel, which opens to let the crane maneuver the cargo in and out, and 2 rear doors. The main rear door is quite large, but has a 70cm sill (otherwhise it floods), which makes moving things out onto the rear deck a bit of a pain.

Astrolabe with the main garage door open.

Our 'lab' was commosed of 2 small containers. The first, near the back doors of the garage was for the formalin and sorting of the larger animals. The second, with a little window, was at the back of the garage, and so a bit warmer and a bit quieter. That's where we did all the precision sorting and identification, chlorophylle filtration and coffee breaks.

Orange formalin container, right, and the rosette of bottles, left.

Interior of the main lab container.

There were 5 teams on board: one doing whale watching from the bridge; one doing the physical parameters of the water; one geology group doing sediment cores; our group fishing for stuff; and one group doing physiological studies on any krill they could get from our nets.

Interior of the krill tub.

This means the boat time had to be split, equally if possible, between the different groups. This was not as easy as it sounds, as we did not all want stations in the same places, and also as we were sampling the zone which used to be close to the Mertz.

B-9B

The Mertz is a big glacier a bit to the East of Dumont d'Urville. It used to have a large tongue of ice going straight out into the sea, and creating a very interesting area on its western size, with retention zones for fish latvae, etc.... Unfortunately, there is a huge iceberg (called B-9B) which has been roaming around East of that since 1987! And last year, its roaming brought it into a collision course with the Mertz. Not only did the B-9B completely break the glacial tongue off, but it has become stuck (for now) just West of where the Mertz tongue was.

All that yellow on the radar is ice! How fun!

Scientifically speaking, we had a block of ice over 300m thick and about 97 x 30km across, which just happens to be sitting on half of our station points. Well as there's not much you can do about that, so we just did what we could around it!

And what we did was:

Water samples, with measurements of the physical parameters of the water (temperature, salinity, etc...), with a rosette of 12 bottles.

The bottles can be closed at different depths, and we then recuperated the water and filtered it, to catch all the small phytoplankton present in the water. The chlorophylle concentrations on the filters are then determined in the lab. I will note here that the Ricard bottle is not part of the official scientific protocole, but turned out to work much better than the plastic keg originally planned.

Sediment cores

A small-meshed net (WP2), in which we mainly got phytoplankton soop.

Seawater, above, and what came out of the net, below...

2 small-meshed nets next to each other

(called Bongo nets because they look like bongo drums).

They were also filled with phytoplankton but we still had to sort through one of the buckets to get out the few fish larvae that were inside.

And finally a large net! The IKMT (for Isaacs Kidd Midwater Trawl) is a super nifty net to fish with, but rather a pain to set up. However, a new technique was used for storing it, in its own box, and that seemed to limit the amount of tangling it could achive between uses.

The IKMT, as well as being a beautiful net,

aslo yields catches of the utmost interest and amusement!

And it is in fact in the IKMT nets that were found most of our precious fish (the cook and various ukrainian crew members had to be forcibly manhandled to a safe distance of this catch),

and my even more precious jellies!

All this makes it sound as if we were working full tilt for 2 weeks. However, for every person working, there were usually at least 2 photographers.

And of course when off shift, we had plenty of leasure time to raid the dining room for M&Ms, observe the wildlife and enjoy the sunset.

Some of the hundred giant petrels that took to following the boat one day.

Of Men and Penguins

Antarctica, the land of penguins!

The Dumont d'Urville base was originally built, or at least a single shack was built on the Île des Pétrels, in order to study penguin colonies close up. And there is so much material to study!

How to describe a penguin....

Well, they are, constitutively, birds. And therefore, in my personal opinion, daft. Add to that the fact that they are water birds, and so are not naturally at ease on land. And add again to that the fact that they are colonial birds, and get easily stressed when alone.

What you get are large groups of birds that are absolutely hilarious any time they are on land, and that are pure grace and speed in the water. Well, most of the time in the water.

The small canal that separates DdU from the Lion is obscured for most of its length by ice coming from the continent's glaciers to the South, and the general water circulation causing ice to pile up on the Southern shore of the Lion. About half way up the Lion, the ice breaks off, to leave a small canal of open water, nicely protected from currents and winds. This is the penguin bathtub. And in there, gone is the grace of the swimming penguin, and inter the team of tuxedo-dressed un-synchronized swimmers!

We did not have much chance of seeing them actually fishing, but we did get to see the trail of bubbles they make. And also the exiting of the water. This is extremely impressive, as they shoot out of the water at high speed and can land on a ledge quite high off the water, and hardly ever fall over when landing. The water intering is also quite nice.

That, however, is the end of grace and elegance. Now on land, they find themselves with large feet, very short legs, and a tummy which prevents them from seeing where they're walking.

And here we come to a parting of the ways.

Although, while in the water, all penguins are penguins, on land that is not so. We arrived in January, so nearly all the emperor penguins had already left, leaving the island swarming with Adelie penguins. Emperor penguins are the largest of penguins, and take their royal status seriously. The press of duty seems to have made them somewhat depressed, as they will wander the ice, shoulder hunched and head hanging. And they make it perfectly clear that there can be no possible friendship with something as lowly as an Adelie penguin.

Emperor chicks with adult Adelie penguins.

This does not seem to over-affect the Adelie penguins, but then they seem constantly on the brink of total pandemonium, so it' s a bit hard to tell...

Adelie penguins. First of all, there is no such thing as ONE Adelie penguin. They get stressed when even at moderate distances from their folk, and will go berkers untill more arrive to see what all the fuss is about.

Adelie penguins are about half the size of the emperors, with a black head and back and a white belly. And they are rock penguins. As in they love rocks.

I am sure you all know about emperor penguins, and if not I recommend the movie March of the Penguins (which is fake and anthropomorphic and all, but nice anyway). Adelie penguins are not at all the same. As I said, they like rocks. So, as soon as they arrive on the island, up they go to the top, and start piling up pebbles to make a nest. Penguins return to where they were born, like salmons, and so the first arrived go back to their old nests, and take the opportunity to steal as many nice pebbles from the neighbouring nests as they can.

As the season progresses, the island slowly fills, untill the nests reach a couple dozen meters from the water's edge. There are usually 2 chicks, and they need feeding! And feeding means fishing, and fishing means you have to make your way down to the sea, which is now packed with penguins. And the penguins on the lower slopes, already slightly annoyed at having been stolen all the best pebbles, become downright furious at people 'passing through' their nesting area.

As one flipper flapped is more that enough to break the fragile barrier of silence and good manners, the whole area explodes onto a squalking, pecking and flipper beating mess. Multiply this by a couple hundred penguin nests, containing of 1 or 2 hungry and fast-growing chicks, needing feeding several times a day....

And, as everywhere, there never are never the same number of females and males. So, among the nests, are lone individuals. And their blood tells them they must find a mate. This is done by the process of finding an unclaimed pebble (for the males) and wandering around with it in their beaks to show it to every penguin they see. The females simply go and see every penguin they see. However, they seem to have a rather wide definition of penguin, or at least of 'possible mate'....

And now to close on penguins and their problems.

Probably the most anthropomorphic animals in the world, they will probably never cease to amuse and surprise, but there are penguins and penguins.

Emperors are regal, and take their duty seriously. They go from extremely sweet and well brought up chicks, to cute molting chicks, to regal poised adults.

Adelie penguins are not quite the beautiful birds you see in pictures. They are mostly noisy, smelly, dirty and frankly histerical. And the molting chicks are not the prettiest sight in the world.

One point on common, is that they're all daft. But then, aren't we?