Penguins and Seals and Whales, Oh My!

For ten years I visited classrooms talking about Antarctica and teaching children and teachers about the wildlife in Antarctica. Some students began calling me the “Penguin Lady,” so when I was selected as a TEA (Teacher Experiencing Antarctica) in 2002, one of the main things I wanted to see was a…polar bear! (Just kidding…I hope ALL of you know they are only found in the Arctic!) Of course, I really wanted to see a penguin. As luck would have it, the huge iceberg that had broken off the year before was pushed up against the coast and penguins were not in abundance that year. The only one that was sighted came walking by our field camp the day I was getting a cast put on my broken wrist, so I missed him! (THAT’s a story for another day!) My team took hundreds of pictures of the little adelie penguin they named, Charlie, and through them, I felt I had seen him, too…but in reality…ah well. Life is cruel sometimes.

So imagine my excitement when Jean Pennycook, a TEA friend of mine and the education outreach director for David Ainley’s www.penguinscience.com, invited me to come out to visit the rookery at Cape Royds! It would give us a chance to talk about how we are each approaching education outreach for our science teams. I brought Steve Petrushak, an ANDRILL scientist, and Rainer Lehmann, the German ARISE teacher. We packed up our sleep kits and “P” bottles (and yes, that’s what they are for!) for camping overnight, and headed out in a pisten bully with Rob Robbins and his dive team. (see the last few pictures.) It was a two-hour drive across the sea ice. The divers dropped us at the Cape Royds camp and then set up their camp on the sea ice where they melted a hole and did three dives to retrieve a current meter. It took them 12 hours to melt the hole, and then several hours to do the dives, so we had from 6 pm until about noon to explore with Jean.

Jean and me--a very cold day!












Jean welcoming us to the Ainley camp. You can see the Jamesway and one of the Scott tents.

Jean and David welcomed us with a wonderful spaghetti dinner—we had brought a fresh loaf of bread from the galley—and then we walked to the penguin rookery. Their camp is over several large hills and quite a distance from the penguins. I asked why so far, but when we got there I understood the reason! The birds are raucous as they call to their mates, and the young males without mates are constantly making displays and loudly shouting their virility to the world hoping a female will notice them. And the smell is reminiscent of a barnyard!

The penguin rookery is an “ASMA” area—Antarctic Specially Managed Area”- so we were not allowed to walk through it, but we were able to stand on a hill overlooking the area and take lots of pictures. I was amazed that as we stood with the 2000 mating pairs of penguins to our left, and the sea ice to our right, that it was only about 200 meters to OPEN ocean! I asked about that, because when we flew in, there were hundreds of miles of frozen ocean before we reached the continent. How could this water be open? David explained that it is a polyna. “Polyna” is a Russian word meaning unfrozen water surrounded by ice. There is some mystery to how these form in the Southern Ocean, but this one was probably blown free of ice by the strong winds experienced here recently, and as a result of the huge iceberg finally breaking up and moving north. At any rate, the penguins are enjoying a much shorter walk to their dinner “tables” and "showers"!


After several years of a declining population at this Adelie penguin rookery, it has shown an increase this year, and we were thrilled to hear that. Many of the birds are wing-tagged or have microchips for tracking. There are four penguin colonies being studied by Ainley’s group. They are from Cape Royds, the smallest with about 4000 birds, to Cape Bird, Beaufort Island and Cape Crozier, the largest with 130,000 birds. The success of the birds may have something to do with the nearness of the open water, so foraging is much easier. I asked about leopard seals and whether they were a problem predator for this colony. Since this is a small colony, it would not support a leopard seal’s need for massive quantities of penguin meat. I was told it would be like a marathon runner trying to eat enough calories by picking strawberries along the way.


From our vantage point on the hill, we were able to watch the penguins in constant motion marching out to the sea and then marching back again. The males and females take turns sitting on the egg while the other goes to eat and groom. They can’t leave the egg alone for a minute because it will freeze, or worse, the skuas will dive in and grab it. Skuas are large, brown sea gull-like scavengers. They will grab an egg from a penguin, or steal a baby if a parent isn’t diligently watching. I saw a little adult penguin run after a large skua when it landed in the rookery. He won, too. I think the skua decided that it wasn’t worth the aggravation. The skua flew off to a different spot where I’m sure he hoped the penguins weren’t keeping such close watch.


We weren’t allowed in the ASMA area, but we were able to walk to the sea ice edge, and if a penguin decided to come up to us…well, it was okay. And they did! It was just amazing. They are so curious when they see the big red people that they come running over to check you out. If we were very quiet, or sat on the ice, they would come within just a few feet and let us take lots of pictures. A whale swam by, and unfortunately our quick glimpse didn’t allow us to identify the species for sure, but we think it was a minke. Minkes are the least threatened of the whale species in the Southern Ocean. We also had quite a show with a momma seal and her pup. The pup was insisting that she play with him, and like a good mom, she did!

A storm blew up quickly, and we decided we had better hike back to the hut before it got much worse. We weren’t ready to go in, but it would not be fun to be caught on the sea ice or in the high hills between the ocean and camp in whiteout conditions. I slept in Jean’s tent, and the guys bunked in a small shed. But, the next morning dawned with a brilliant blue sky and bright, beautiful light, and we knew we were in store for some better pictures than even the night before.

Again we hiked down to the sea ice and gingerly picked our way through the cracks. It is very slick and is beginning to change, so lots of caution was required. But the effort was well worth it. We saw emperors as well as adelies! And the adelies were very active swimming and jumping through the water and leaping up onto the ice and sliding like a fumbled football before stopping.


So I hope you enjoy these pictures. I will let them tell part of the story. It was an experience I will never forget, and I wish I could find the words to adequately describe the pictures I carry in my head!

Rainer. Louise, and Steve on the way back, stopped at Barn Glacier.

Pisten Bully pulling the divers' "tomato" hut. Thanks Amy, Rob and Addy for the ride! Thanks Steve and Rainer for sharing photos!

Launching a Met Balloon

November 17, 2007


Meteorological (met) balloons are launched from McMurdo twice daily to gather atmospheric data that helps predict the weather. A weatherman’s job in Antarctica is especially difficult for several reasons. First, there is no radar data for the meteorologists to use for this area. Think about how our weathermen at home use radar images as a matter of course! Second, weather here can change dramatically and dangerously in just a matter of hours. But the greatest challenge for the weather predictors here is that they are acutely aware that people’s lives depend on the accuracy of their predictions. Helicopter flights and fixed wing flights are governed by the decisions made at the Met Center, as are field teams’ travel plans. If a plane takes off, it must be able to fly to its destination. There are precious few other places for them to land if the weather deteriorates.

So, imagine my excitement when Patricia Ballou invited me to launch one of the met balloons. Patricia has quite an amazing story. She is on a leave from the army where she has deployed to the Mideast twice, once to Iraq and once to Afghanistan. She worked as a combat weatherperson in the army and is now gathering data and helping predict the weather in Antarctica this year. She is also writing climate interviews for Celsias. Check out her interview with David Harwood, the co-chief of ANDRILL and keep watching for an interview she is working on with me! (www.celsias.com then scroll down the right side to Patricia’s name.)


Patricia is adding in weather data to the computer that came in from one of the Met field stations while I was there.

I met her at the Met Center and when I arrived she had begun hydrating the Sonde. The Sonde is a complicated device that records many different types of data including temperature, barometric pressure, and relative humidity, while also carrying an antenna that allows satellites to track it as well as to send data back to the McMurdo weather computers. This morning, ten satellites were tracking this one balloon! I found it interesting that the same data is received in South Carolina where besides helping predict the weather here, it is being used in world climate models.

Patricia and I took the fully hydrated Sonde down to the “balloon shack,” a two story structure built on prime McMurdo real estate. When the door is opened, what a view there is of the Ross Sea and the Trans-Antarctic Mountains!


Balloon shack—notice the two story section—very large Met balloons can be inflated here.



Patrica’s pointing out the view of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains and Hut Point.



Patricia turns on the helium pumps in the huge outside tanks.


Blowing up the balloon with helium.

Patricia deftly ties the Sonde onto the inflated balloon.
The Sonde has a small wire that records all of the measurements--and an antenna on the other end that sends the info to the McM computers.

Guess who I am missing!



Walking out of the balloon shack was tricky. It was very windy and felt like I could take wing and fly at any moment. The wind kept whipping the balloon around over my head, so I hung on to it and the Sonde, worried I would mess this up and ruin an expensive piece of equipment!


It felt like the wind was winning at this point. I was concentrating on the directions Patricia had given me—let go of the balloon and wait until you feel it tug on the Sonde, then let it go too.
Mentally rehearsing— concentrate! Don’t mess up!

And there she goes! If you look carefully, you can see the Sonde unraveling its string to dangle quite some distance from the balloon.

Walking back to the Met building I took this picture—it’s the building with the large white golf ball on top. Notice the “catwalk” because in the next picture I am ON that walk. Patricia and I went up on the roof where she takes precipitation samples. I liked the view! But I didn’t like the one flight climb down the metal rung ladder to get back inside!

Beacon Valley...or Gilligan's Island?

Beautiful view of a huge glacier in the Dry Valleys.

Two tiny climbers in red are on this mountain--can you find them? This is to give an idea of scale!

Remember the old TV show, Gilligan’s Island? Well, we also started out on a fateful trip…

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…a tale of a fateful trip.
It started from this icy shore aboard a flying ship.

The mate was a mighty helo tech, the pilot brave and sure…
Eight passengers took flight that day for an eight-hour tour…

The weather started getting rough, the tiny craft was tossed
Helo Ops stopped all the flights, so the crew would not be lost.

The explorers hiked across the hills, to the shore of New Harbor Isle…
They had to make the best of things, they’re here for a long, long time.


We took a helo field trip out to Beacon Valley--it's a valley farther than the Taylor Glacier which was as close to the polar plateau as I had been before. The mountains at the end of Beacon actually hold back the polar ice sheet. Beacon is one of the Dry Valleys; an incredible landscape that reminds one of Mars—red sand and rocks, and dry as a bone. According to written records, it has not precipitated there in over fifteen million years, and what does fall is all snow or ice, which often ablates before hitting the ground.
Louise showing scale of a rock split during freeze-thaw cycles. Looks like Our helo taking off after dropping us in Beacon Valley.
a huge 3-D jigsaw puzzle!

It was windy and very cold, but as long as we kept moving, we were quite comfortable. We hiked around the bouldery valley floor and up the mountain slopes to take a look at the outcrops of rock, which are partially responsible for feeding sediments into Victoria Basin where we are drilling right now. After about four and a half hours the helo picked us up and took us to Commonwealth Glacier where, in 2002, I had studied the streams that melt and run-off in the summer. It was exciting to “come home” to the place I had spent eight weeks my first time in Antarctica.


We were dropped with our survival bags about a mile and a half from the glacier, so we hiked over to take a closer look, then hiked back to the drop point. We still had an hour before the helo was to come back, so some (I opted out--I had already hiked about five hours--a lot of it uphill) climbed down a steep embankment (about fifty yards down) and then up the other side to an outcrop there. I took a nap on a huge, tabular rock--great view of the glacier and mountains, and it felt great!


The rest of the group finally came back, and we waited about half an hour for the helo which didn't come-our radios weren't working in the valley, so a group hiked to the top of the closest hill and tried again. Mac Ops told us that they were weathered in and no flights could get to us. We had two choices: make camp with the survival bags--ugh! Nasty freeze-dried food, tents, pads and sleeping bags that aren't all that great, and stoves that we were trained to use in Happy Camper School, OR, walk three and a half miles over a small mountainous or hilly terrain to New Harbor camp. We chose that option. Our weather was fine--so off we went. I felt it was tough going—others thought it was a walk in the park! I’m sure it was all a function of age and fitness level—guess which end of the spectrum I ended up on! You decide where on the spectrum you would have fallen. Some of the way was through snow that would break under your feet and end halfway up your calf--you'd have to pull your leg free. Then you'd be on large rocks that turned and twisted under your boots; then over small, pebbly surfaces that moved like sand and were hard to walk through. I preferred the larger boulders and hated the snow! I was carrying a heavy backpack and sweating as we crossed the last of the three hills (not quite "mountains" but enough elevation for me!).

But the walk was well worth it. We arrived at New Harbor about 10 PM. The camp was a double "jamesway", a curved canvas shelter with electricity, wooden flooring, tables, chairs, a gas stove and cots with blankets and pillows. It also had two large propane heaters, so we were toasty for most of the stay. There wasn't a lot of food, but we had hot chocolate, granola bars, and Ramen noodles--so not a bad deal at all. In the morning we found that some frozen food had been stored in a cold cellar, so we baked raspberry turn-overs and if we had had to stay longer, we also found bagels we could toast up.

The only difficulty was during the night. There were only five cots and eight people, so three slept on the floor or on tables. The cots weren’t exactly cushy, but I fell asleep fairly quickly just wishing for a toothbrush! In the middle of the night, my shivering woke me up, and I knew from survival training that your body is heading toward hypothermia if you don’t take steps to warm up. The propane heater had gone out, and I was closest to the outside wall. The cold air was sucking the heat out of my body from under the cot. I got up and folded a blanket to give me four layers under me, put my Big Red on, and found another blanket for my feet. I can’t say I was warm, but at least I wasn’t shivering anymore.

The next morning the weather was still bad in McMurdo and we had a low ceiling in the Dry Valleys, so we explored the sea ice and a small fishing hut that was located in the harbor. The sea ice is amazing. I think this is multi-year ice, so it is very thick, but it also had huge pressure ridges, cracks, and lots of sediment that has built up on the surface. While on the ice, we found a large seal that had pushed her nose through a dive hole, lifted off the cover that the divers had attached, and flopped down to take a nap in the sun. She was funny to watch. She’d lift her head and check us out, but it was obvious that she knew the redcoats were no threat because she plopped back down and went right back to sleep. Have you ever watched a dreaming dog with its paws running? Well, she, too, seemed to be dreaming as she flipped her tail and made little grunting noises. I’m not sure if it was a happy dream or a nightmare, but she was certainly busy!

Finally around noon, the ceiling lifted enough that a helo was able to go pick up our survival bags, about 100 pounds of rock samples we had collected, and then it came to get us.

Our eight-hour tour had ended up being a twenty-four hour “boondoggle.” When we arrived back in McMurdo, we were met with concerned looks over our “survival trial”—that is until they found out what a cushy setting we really had! So they wanted to know how ‘Gilligan’s Island’ really was, and although I thought we should have agreed upon a good story about facing the harsh Antarctic winds as we fought our way on foot across the mountains…we couldn’t help but just grin over our grand adventure!

Thanks Kate Pound and Joanna Hubbard for sharing your pictures! My camera was dropped about a week ago, and I am so grateful that you are taking so many great shots!













Kate Pound in front of the jamesways at the New Harbor field camp.
Joanna Hubbard

Stepping Back in Time: Discovery Hut

Just outside of McMurdo on Hut Point Peninsula sits Robert Falcon Scott’s ‘Discovery Hut.’ Scott was a British naval officer who led two memorable expeditions to Antarctica. Discovery Hut was built during his first expedition in 1901-1904. (and you thought my 2 ½ months in Antarctica was a long time!) During this expedition Scott achieved the record for reaching the furthest point south at 82°17’. He also explored the Ross Sea area and discovered the Dry Valleys. (The Dry Valleys are the 2% of Antarctica that has no snow or ice cover and has had virtually no precipitation in the last 15 million years. This is where I was camped in 2002.)
Looking toward Cape Evans from the hill above the hut, you can imagine
watching Scott’s party trudging over the ice and snow to get to this depot.


During Scott’s second expedition to Antarctica, his goal was to reach the South Pole. His ship became icebound, but most of his crew lived on board and only used the huts at Cape Evans and Hut Point Peninsula as a staging base and storage facility.
It is generally so cold in Antarctica that there is very little decomposition.
This is a mummified seal on top of some canvas left outside of the hut by
Scott’s men. The seal is probably a century old!

It was this second expedition from 1910-1912, that is the most famous and also the most tragic of his stories. Scott and his men set out to be the first to reach the South Pole, man-hauling their sledges loaded with supplies. They survived fierce winds and storms, but were buoyed by the knowledge that they were approaching the South Pole. Using their sextant, they calculated the exact point and upon reaching it, instead of a joyous celebration of conquest, they were met by a rock cairn and the Norwegian flag. By just a month, Roald Amundsen had beaten them to the prize. The defeat was disheartening, and the men faced another 800 mile treacherous journey back to their ship.

Some historians have questioned Scott’s leadership. On his earlier expedition, several men suffered from scurvy, a disease that as a naval officer he was keenly aware. Another questionable decision was that the men had collected rock samples for scientific studies, but they continued to haul them, even as they grew weaker and weaker. The group was on the verge of starvation; many became ill; they were besieged by frostbite. Two men died on the journey back, and then a fierce storm forced the last three to hunker down in their tent, and eventually they all succumbed to starvation and the elements. The saddest part of the tale is that they were just a mere dozen or so miles from the hut and their ship. Scott wrote, "Our luck in weather is preposterous...the conditions simply horrible". The truth of the matter is that Scott’s team did endure terrible, unusual weather for that time of the year, and that bad luck probably did play a large role in the sad outcome.

The supplies are left in the hut pretty much as they were when Scott and his men were here. There were times that you expected one of these heroic explorers to step around the canvas curtain hanging in the center of the room and greet us.

Instead, I peeked through the curtain!
On the other side of the curtain was the cooking space, so I tried my hand at cooking.

Would you like a little New Zealand lamb for dinner?
We found it hanging in the food storage room. Not exactly
fresh meat now that a century has past!

I had to put this picture in of Hunter's Oatmeal--this is for my son, Hunter!

No "Herbies" for Happy Campers

Winds that build into storms and flow toward McMurdo out of the South are called "Herbies." My last experience with Survival School, involved a Herbie and a Condition 1, (**see last paragraph for a definition) both of which I never want to have to deal with again, so I had been dreading going back to “Happy Camper School” this year!

But…this year’s survival training took place in beautiful weather. Not a single Herbie in sight! The temperature ranged between zero and twenty below most of the time, but it wasn’t windy and the sun was shining brightly. Our Big Reds are incredibly warm and with layers of long underwear and fleece shirts and pants, we were toasty as long as we kept moving! It was so bright that goggles were a must to avoid snow blindness.

We were driven out onto the ice shelf, part of Antarctica’s huge ice sheet that has pushed out over the ocean. The ice is an incredible 35-40 meters deep. Our FSTP (pronounced F-stop, meaning Field Safety Training Program) leaders taught us skills we would need if we found ourselves in an emergency situation in Antarctica. Even though I have had this training before, I learned new things and reinforced former skills. The main skill that was stressed was prevention, but if we should find ourselves in a bad situation…stop and think. Good advice for everyone, I think.

One form of prevention was that even though the weather looked beautiful, it was necessary to drill holes in the sea ice to flag a line to the latrine just in case... the weather can change suddenly and viciously in Antarctica, and getting lost in a whiteout can be disastrous. Whiteouts reduce visibility to zero, and without a horizon or landmarks people easily become disoriented. Raging winds make it impossible to hear. Our survival trainers created a whiteout simulation was for our team by placing buckets on our heads. We had to try to find a lost member without sight or hearing and our only tool was a rope. It is a very difficult rescue! The best way to avoid that scenario is to stay inside in a whiteout or condition 1!

For all of my northern friends, try these ideas for staying warm in the cold chill of winter: stay hydrated; eat chocolate or candy for an immediate calorie boost, but then add grease to rev your metabolism, (this is for prolonged exposure, not just walking to the mailbox!) wear many layers, but never wear cotton next to your skin (cotton kills!), and move around. As soon as my toes began to get cold, I started walking around, and they soon warmed up. Swinging your arms also helps.

Our greatest problem was trying not to sweat as we were setting up two 100 pound Scott tents, four mountain tents digging a Quinzee, boiling water for dinner, flagging the trail to the latrine, building twenty sleep kits, and building an ice wall to block the wind from the tents. Sweating cools you off, so staying warm, but not sweating required constant attention to your body temperature. There were twenty of us, and we worked well as a team. Survival as your common goal is extremely motivating!















Building a Quinzee hut took the efforts of the entire team. All of our sleep kits (large duffle bags with pads, liners and sleeping bags) were piled on top of each other in a huge bonfire style. Then we shoveled snow on top of them until they were covered by about a foot or more of snow in all directions. We pounded it down tight, and then dug a tunnel through which we could retrieve the bags. The inside of the hut was carved out to make a space for 2-3 people to sleep. Snow is such a good insulator, that most of the people who slept in there claimed they slept warm.

I slept with four people in a Scott tent meant for two to three people. That fourth person made it feel rather claustrophobic, but it also helped generate a lot of heat. We all slept warm…something I did not experience during my first Happy Camper School. As a matter of fact, I was anything but happy that year, so I made a play on that for Halloween.

When we got back to town, it was buzzing with excitement as everyone dressed for the Halloween costume party. I really thought I would have to miss the party because of Happy Camper School, so I did not have a costume plan. Robin, one of the ARISE teachers, gave me a flashing red nose, so I added black gloves and a sign that said: “Unhappy Camper: I wish I’d listened to my FSTP trainer—sunburned nose and frostbitten fingers.” (to see a picture of me visit my friend, Mindy Bell's blog at http://www.polartrec.com/node/1959. She is a Polar Trec teacher in McMurdo with scientist Stacy Kim) It was the best I could do five minutes before the party, but I was considerably underdressed in comparison to the amazing creativity of the McMurdo Community. Check out the pictures of the National Geographic—he was amazing and it was no surprise that he won a prize. Hope your Halloween was filled with treats and no tricks!

**In Antarctica we have three weather conditions that are flashed on TV screens and the intranet constantly. Condition 1 is by far the worst. Visibility is less that 100 feet, or wind speed is greater than 60 mph, or the wind chill is greater than -100 °F. In a Condition 1 you are required to stay where you are. If you are in the galley, you have to stay there. In your dorm or office, the same thing. Field camps have to get in their tents and hunker down as best they can. Last year, a Condition 1 hit a field camp and lifted up a snow machine and tossed it into the air like a toy. Luckily no one was hurt, but it serves as a reminder that Antarctica can have a very nasty temper, and it should never be underestimated or forgotten. Condition 2 is visibility of less the ¼ mile, or wind speeds between 55-65 mph, or a wind chill factor between -75° and -100°F. Obviously not a day to spend much time outside either! Condition 3 is anything better than a Condition 2 up to a beautiful sunny day.