Brown Bluff and the Weddell Sea
2005 ended on a foggy and rainy but nonetheless exciting day in the Shetland Islands – our first landing in Antarctica. As we celebrated the arrival of the New Year, we crossed Bransfield Strait. We awoke to a clear, bright, and sunny 2006 in Antarctic Sound, off of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Antarctic Sound is known as “Iceberg Alley,” for the huge tabular icebergs spawned from the ice sheets of the Weddell Sea that pass through this narrow opening. Our morning landing was at Brown Bluff, on the very tip of the Peninsula – for many a chance to set foot on their seventh continent. Brown Bluff is home to a colony of about 10,000 pairs of adelie penguins, and we were greeted by a parade of penguins, seemingly returning, still tux-clad, from their New Year celebration. Actually, they were engaged in a much more serious pursuit. By January, their two eggs have hatched and there are hungry chicks to be fed. When chicks are small, one adult leaves to feed on krill while the other remains to feed and protect the young. As the chicks grow and their demands for food increase, they gather in groups we call crèches, allowing both adults to forage almost continuously and increase the rate of food delivery to the chicks. Adults leaving the colony to feed gather in groups on the shore until, with much bustle and murmuring, they enter the sea in a rush. In this way, each penguin increases its chance of making it past the leopard seals that patrol the water to take their toll. So … on this bright morning we explored Brown Bluff, cameras clicking furiously. Many chose to simply sit and watch the activities of the colony, the comings and goings, the spats between neighbors, the thievery of stones to be added to nests, the begging of chicks and feeding by the parents. Some walked a short distance up the hill to see several snow petrels sitting quietly on nests tucked deep in a crevice below a large boulder. Rather few people on the earth have seen the nest of a snow petrel; we know that we are most fortunate.
The National Geographic Endeavour continued southward into the Weddell Sea on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula, through Erebus and Terror Gulf. Icebergs of all sizes and shapes gleamed white and blue in the bright mid-summer light. Our destination was Snow Hill Island, but our progress was interrupted by a sighting of Antarctic orca or killer whales – a sighting too good to pass by. They were identified by Naturalist Ingrid Visser as the “Type B” orca, which specialize on seals. The two separate groups first sighted merged until there were approximately twenty-five whales swimming in formation and rising as group to breath, leaving the mist of their exhalation visible in the crisp Antarctic air.
We passed Snow Hill, with a distant view of the small hut in which Otto Nordenskjold and five others over-wintered twice (only the first by choice) in 1902/03; it was one of the first Antarctic over-winterings. We ate another fine dinner with magnificent, ever-changing Antarctic scenery drifting by the windows. Our southward progress was stopped by dense ice near the south end of Snow Hill Island and we turned around, but our day was far from over. The light of the setting sun (at 10:00 PM!) cast a beautiful red/purple glow over the landscape, highlighting the shapes and textures of the ice and luring us, like an Antarctic siren, for a last turn around the decks. The temperature fell, and the surface of the sea began to freeze. Adelie penguins dotted the ice … but, wait, that penguin looks large! We had spotted what all of us wished for but none dared to expect – an emperor penguin. It was tobogganing on its belly over the new ice, and then, to great applause, it stood majestically for all to see. Our bird was an immature, not yet adult and breeding, its yellow markings less vivid than they will become, but that took away none of the joy of our moment spent with an emperor penguin, in the slowly turning light a clear Antarctic night in the Weddell Sea. Life is good!
2005 ended on a foggy and rainy but nonetheless exciting day in the Shetland Islands – our first landing in Antarctica. As we celebrated the arrival of the New Year, we crossed Bransfield Strait. We awoke to a clear, bright, and sunny 2006 in Antarctic Sound, off of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Antarctic Sound is known as “Iceberg Alley,” for the huge tabular icebergs spawned from the ice sheets of the Weddell Sea that pass through this narrow opening. Our morning landing was at Brown Bluff, on the very tip of the Peninsula – for many a chance to set foot on their seventh continent. Brown Bluff is home to a colony of about 10,000 pairs of adelie penguins, and we were greeted by a parade of penguins, seemingly returning, still tux-clad, from their New Year celebration. Actually, they were engaged in a much more serious pursuit. By January, their two eggs have hatched and there are hungry chicks to be fed. When chicks are small, one adult leaves to feed on krill while the other remains to feed and protect the young. As the chicks grow and their demands for food increase, they gather in groups we call crèches, allowing both adults to forage almost continuously and increase the rate of food delivery to the chicks. Adults leaving the colony to feed gather in groups on the shore until, with much bustle and murmuring, they enter the sea in a rush. In this way, each penguin increases its chance of making it past the leopard seals that patrol the water to take their toll. So … on this bright morning we explored Brown Bluff, cameras clicking furiously. Many chose to simply sit and watch the activities of the colony, the comings and goings, the spats between neighbors, the thievery of stones to be added to nests, the begging of chicks and feeding by the parents. Some walked a short distance up the hill to see several snow petrels sitting quietly on nests tucked deep in a crevice below a large boulder. Rather few people on the earth have seen the nest of a snow petrel; we know that we are most fortunate.
The National Geographic Endeavour continued southward into the Weddell Sea on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula, through Erebus and Terror Gulf. Icebergs of all sizes and shapes gleamed white and blue in the bright mid-summer light. Our destination was Snow Hill Island, but our progress was interrupted by a sighting of Antarctic orca or killer whales – a sighting too good to pass by. They were identified by Naturalist Ingrid Visser as the “Type B” orca, which specialize on seals. The two separate groups first sighted merged until there were approximately twenty-five whales swimming in formation and rising as group to breath, leaving the mist of their exhalation visible in the crisp Antarctic air.
We passed Snow Hill, with a distant view of the small hut in which Otto Nordenskjold and five others over-wintered twice (only the first by choice) in 1902/03; it was one of the first Antarctic over-winterings. We ate another fine dinner with magnificent, ever-changing Antarctic scenery drifting by the windows. Our southward progress was stopped by dense ice near the south end of Snow Hill Island and we turned around, but our day was far from over. The light of the setting sun (at 10:00 PM!) cast a beautiful red/purple glow over the landscape, highlighting the shapes and textures of the ice and luring us, like an Antarctic siren, for a last turn around the decks. The temperature fell, and the surface of the sea began to freeze. Adelie penguins dotted the ice … but, wait, that penguin looks large! We had spotted what all of us wished for but none dared to expect – an emperor penguin. It was tobogganing on its belly over the new ice, and then, to great applause, it stood majestically for all to see. Our bird was an immature, not yet adult and breeding, its yellow markings less vivid than they will become, but that took away none of the joy of our moment spent with an emperor penguin, in the slowly turning light a clear Antarctic night in the Weddell Sea. Life is good!
