Last post from Antarctica

Our plane is on its way from Christchurch, and in 45 minute or so we will get on some sort of interesting transportation device for the 40-ish minute drive out to the Pegusis Airfield. This late in the season, the sea ice runway right in front of McMurdo is mostly melted, and what isn't has had a channel cut through it by the icebreaker. So we need to drive up onto the ice shelf for our departure flight.
Yesterday we had an amazing trip on the icebreaker out to Beaufort Island. Unfortunately I don't have time to give a full account now, but it was an exciting trip: feeling the ship shudder as it plowed through ice chunks; orcas and minke whales and some probable Arnoux's Beaked Whales (Davie hasn't decided yet); getting into and out of the shore-landing boat vial a rope ladder over the side of the icebreaker; jumping through small surf to get to the beach then banding 400 Adelie chicks with Weddell Seals lounging all around.
Its hard to believe my time here is over. With no natural day-night pattern, there is no scale for the passage of time and it seems to have passed in an instant and taken ages all at once.
This is an amazing place to have lived for a while. I hope I get thorough chance to share my experiences with you all beyond just photos and words here.
For now...

Photo page #2

Here's a random assortment of photos...



"Behind bars". The fractured ice along the beach early in the season was twisted and piled into great patterns and shapes. These icecicles were dripping down from a big block that was lifted 10-20 feet up.



Here you get a sense of the colony's scale. This is the eastern half of the main part of the colony. The smaller blobs of penguins on nests are the subcolonies.




Another view of the ice maze along the beach. This was changing all the time, and some days the Adelies had quite a time getting to the colony.




Grant walking down Pat's Peak, where we would do our sea watches. The Ross Ice Shelf is in the background.

The Adelies really seemed to enjoy this "kiddie pool", formed by the fast ice buckling down below sea level. Just 2 days before this was firmly anchored to the beach and I stood right where the penguins are swimming!

Return to Crozier and photo batch 1

Yesterdayday Annie, Jean and I flew back to Cape Crozier to conduct the final round of chick measurements there. Cloudy skies and unpredictable wind threatened our helo flight out, but eventually the pilot decided to give it a try. For once the weather at Crozier was better than at McMurdo, and we got 30 chicks measured in about 35 minutes. Chicks continue to be small even this late in the season, and seem not to be "catching up" from this year's late laying date. We were back to McM for lunch, and spent th rest of the day puttering around the lab and proofing some data. I've realized that I won't really make the time to go back through my previous posts and find appropriate pictures for them; and that could be tedious viewing for people. In stead, I'll start putting up photo pages of my favorite shots, with captions or descriptions of whats going on. I'll try to go somewhat chronologically through my time at Crozier, but I may also have subject-bases pages.

First things first, we had to set up the tents we would be sleeping in.

Early in the season there was a lot of fast ice (sea ice that's attached to land) for the penguins to hang out on in their comings and goings between the colony and the sea.

It's endless entertainment watching them fly out of the water onto the ice. Often they don't time it right and smack into a wall of ice or jump too soon and land in the water without hitting anything solid.

This big crack opened up and refroze many times before warm temperatures and winds from the right direction finally pushed the fast ice out. When those conditions did occure, all the low ice you can see here dissapeared in about 20 hours, and some chunks of the ice shelf (far background) disconnected and drifted off too!

The early part of the season can also be characterized by wind. This is looking out from the hut on our windiest day. Sustained winds were 80-105 mph for most of the day, and we had many gusts in the 110-120 range. The only ice in this photo is the big sheet; all the littler white specks are white caps!




The wind came up somewhat suddenly, and we didn't have time to take down Grant's mountaineering tent. In 100 mph winds it is difficult just to stand up, and there was no way we could go out and take the tent down once it really started blowing. Over an hour or so the tent was flattened and shredded and the poles were snapped in two!

That's it for now, I'll put more shots up in a day or two.

Back in McMurdo

The past few weeks have seemed to disappear like the melting snow, yet it seems like so long ago that I last sent an update. As the title to this post suggests, we are back at McMurdo station, after 2 months and 6 days at Cape Crozier. The final week or so at Crozier was spent checking nests to determine outcomes, daily weighbridge data downloads, chick condition measurements, picking rocks out of penguin-poo samples with bare hands then attempting to wash off in the cold ocean, and, on our second to last day, banding 1000 chicks. This last task was quite an event. We had 4 additional people come out to help with the job, David and Jean from PengiunScience, Elise a painter on the NSF Writers and Artist’s Grant, and Dave, someone David and Jean know from McMurdo. To catch the chicks, 2 L-shaped fences were placed together around a crèche, then the banders stepped in, removed adults and too-small chicks, then began closing bands on flippers. Inside the chick-corral was a cloud of poo-dust, fluffy down, and dander. David, Jean, Annie, Stephanie and I banded while Dave and Elise pre-bent bands and handed them out when someone’s pocket-full was gone. It was a whirlwind 5 hours of work, and 3 days later I am still recovering with sore thumbs from closing bands, a strained shoulder from lifting chicks and fences at weird angles, and a strange tingling from my left calf down and inability to lift my toes toward my knee.
The last day was spent packing, working on data, and saying goodbye to the penguins and this amazing place. Yesterday morning a helicopter flew out and Elise, Annie and I piled in with many hundreds of pounds of gear. As the helo lifted off I peered over bags and boxes at the place that had been my home for two months shrinking away below. First just the hut and tents filled my view, with Mark and Jeff waving from the hut door; then the surrounding snowfield and Pats Peak, then the white stains of the colony and the crystal-edge of the Ice shelf driving purposefully toward the horizon. I felt sad to be leaving Cape Crozier, and I know I will miss the place and the penguins and the utter simplicity of living so single-mindedly, completely engrossed in what I was doing. But in the last few days I haven’t been able to avoid thinking about the other world, the one I’m now on the verge of rejoining. I’ve marveled at how those things that have such great importance at Cape Crozier have such little relevance in the other world. For the past two months I’ve been consumed by looking at penguins’ left flippers for bands. That one pursuit has filled more waking hours than anything else. But at home there will be so many things vying for my attention, I will be unable to devote such time to any one thing. Already the other world is clawing at me, grabbing my thoughts and diverting my imagination.
McMurdo is a surreal place after two months at Crozier. Checking for traffic while walking around and taking a shower are weird enough. But the most bizarre is to find yourself at a giant party watching really good funk and old rock music, surrounded by people and free beer, having gotten off the helo just 8 hours previously.
I have around 6200 photos, so it is sort of an overwhelming task deciding which to share with you. I’ll go back through the previous posts and add shots that go with what I wrote. I may also do some sort of web album, or do some additional, photo-heavy posts. We’ll see.



Big chick looking for a meal.


Molting. They seem a little embarassed at their apperance.




Helping Stephanie pull weighbridge fence up to the hut.




Annie and Stephanie in the throes of data proofing. A couple of times we used the hut's only light when the sun was behind the ridge and there were dark clouds.

Jan 13

Hello,

Here's another update. Things are getting busy with the end of the
season, so its not as polished and coherent as I'd like.


In the three or so weeks that Amelie and Stephanie have been here, we
have had the best imaginable weather. There have been some cloudy and
cold days, but the winds have rarely been above 10-15 mph, and we've
had a long string of field work. Other than one or two hut days, the
last month has been one 6-10 hour field day after another. So, when we
awoke two days ago and saw big snowflakes falling heavily across the
landscape and the ocean obscured by clouds, I was somewhat glad for a
rest day. The winds this day weren't so bad, and work could have been
done, but with snow covering nest tags and filling up binocular
lenses, it would have gotten frustrating quickly. In the afternoon the
clouds parted and the sun came out for a time. Annie went out for a
few hours of work, but I decided to take a full day of rest and start
with long hours again the next day. If only I knew what the weather
had in store for us, I would have taken advantage while I could. In
the evening we could see a line of white caps out to sea, where there
must have been 50+ mph winds. It was quite eerie having dead calm at
the hut and looking out onto the tempest coming slowly closer.
The next morning was calm with high clouds, but to the east was a dark
wall of storm rising from sea level high into the sky. While it was
still relatively nice, I decided to make a dash out and get some work
done. I got 15 minutes of peaceful wandering in the colony before the
weather was upon me. I continued for 30 more minutes, occasionally
being blown off balance by gusts but generally having a fine time.
Glancing back up the hill, I could see my route back was enveloped in
swirls of windblown snow. Fearing the weather would worsen, I began my
walk back. Nearing the hut, conditions got better and Annie and
Stephanie were headed down to a different part of the colony. We
discussed the weather a bit, and I decided to head back down and give
it another try. It was fairly calm on the high ridge where I was, and
it seemed like just the leading edge of the storm had big winds.
That was almost true.
We worked for another hour in growing winds, with snow tornadoes
rolling down from higher elevations and the sea a foamy dark smudge
under gray clouds. Gusts were nearing 40 mph, so while we were in no
danger of being blown off our feet or losing our way in a white out,
it was difficult reading bands through shaky binoculars and writing
data on flapping notebook pages. We quickly searched a few sections of
the colony then retreated to our warm sanctuary.
That night our peak gust was 53 mph; still nothing like we got early
in the season, but enough to make field work look like a fairly bad
prospect. However, after a few days of not downloading the weighbridge
data I was worried about filling up the computer’s memory, so I
decided to head down and at least do that. With the download
progressing I checked nests and tightened the fence. Then I decided to
walk around the colony a bit to see if work was possible. Plumes of
snow blew far out to sea from the snow cornice just to the east of the
colony, and my body was jostled back and forth. It was fun to stand
for a while, hands deep in pockets and face turtled down into my
jacket collar. But after 10 minutes I was chilled through 5 layers and
I could see that getting anything productive done would be quite a
task. For the rest of the download I sat in the tent staying warm,
watching snow tornados spin out over the ocean and curious penguins
peer in at me. Winds at the hut are sustained in the 30s and gusting
into the 40s, but here it is relatively calm.
.
The penguins don't seem to mind the weather much. In fact, most hardly
seem to notice it. Many adults are bathing quite happily close to
shore and big groups are porpoising back and forth in search of krill.
Even some of the chicks seem fairly oblivious to the conditions. Some
have formed creches, groups of chicks that huddle together for
protection from skuas while both parents venture out to forage. Some
creches are simply balls of fluff, comprised of 5-10 chicks, with a
foot or flipper sticking out here or there. But other chicks are
standing out in the open, near their parents, and seem to be perfectly
happy in the wind.
The chicks look to me like children wearing big, soft wool sweaters
borrowed from their parents. Their krill-stuffed, pear-shaped bodies
sag down toward the ground and their flippers, not yet hardened for
swimming, flop humorously like long sleeves half-filled with short
arms.
That day Amelie and Chris left, so now we are back to a manageable 5
people living in the hut, but we have to work a bit faster to search
the whole colony. With another two weeks or so, it feels like we’ve
entered the home stretch of the field season.

Jan 1, 2009

I had a worrying feeling recently that I would never really be able to
tell people what it is like here, what it really means to be here. I
think I could describe the scene just fine, to tell what it looks and
sounds and smells like to be surrounded by tens of thousands of
penguins, with snow drifting lazily sideways and 100 shades of gray in
the clouds and ocean. I could tell about the quick chill of a
snowflake landing on my face then evaporating away in a moment. I
could tell of the booming of calls across the colony, sometimes
sounding like a flock of geese feeding in a field, and at others like
nothing I’ve heard before. I could tell of the joy of watching penguin
chicks hatch and grow fast on full bellies of krill, and of the
gruesome spectacle when they are plucked from the nest and eaten
alive.
But I worry that I won't be able to tell about my feelings, what it
means to me to be here, and what it’s really LIKE to be here. I feel
so many emotions thru the course of the day. Pure joy to deep
loneliness. Curiosity, wonder, boredom. Excitement, exhaustion,
stress. Mix these together and simmer at freezing for 6 weeks. Serve
in a coffee-stained mug with dark chocolate to get a sense of what
it’s like to live here. Then in a few weeks you’ll get to see my
pictures and get a bit better feeling.
We’ve had a busy few days to start the New Year. Mark and Jeff, the
BBC crew, returned on the 31st and brought with them several packages
from home. With all the new camera gear, cardboard shreds and candy
wrappers flying around, not to mention 7 people trying to get
comfortable in a space not much bigger than a nice-sized bathroom, the
hut had a busy, festive look. At the strike of mid-night (actually 2
minutes late because we got distracted) we hoisted rum or whiskey and
wished each other happy new year. Mark almost sang a song then decided
better of it.
The next day promised to be exciting, as we were to begin measuring
chick condition. It was sunny, calm and warm as we began
systematically moving through the colony snatching chicks briefly from
their nests for measurements. With four people we had an efficient
production line; one would pick a random nest and get the chicks while
dodging beaks and flippers then bring the one or two chicks out to the
others. Then one of us would measure the wings, one would weigh, and
one would record data. After just a minute or two the chicks were back
in their nest under confused parents (no skua has ever brought chicks
back!!). It took us an hour and a half to do the required 50 chicks,
and all went relatively smoothly considering only one of us had ever
done this before.
Later in the day, as I was waiting for the weighbridge data to
download, I spotted a leopard seal snoozing on a floating platform of
ice, with around 100 Adelies standing right next to it! The penguins
seemed rather casual, and even seemed at times to be daring each other
to get closer. The seal must have already eaten, since it hardly
appeared to notice all the gawkers just a few feet away.
Smelling dinner 50 feet away from the hut was welcome after 10 hours
in the field. We had chicken sautéed in coconut milk and canned
tomatoes, with blueberry cream pie brought by Mark and Jeff from the
McMurdo galley for desert. Another hour or so of data entry, then
sorting through the day’s few hundred pictures, then it’s time to go
to bed.