November 18, 1996

Emperor Penguins at the Sea Ice Edge

A mild breeze blew onshore, coming up from the sea ice in the direction of McMurdo Station. This was a good sign, as I was planning a day at the ice edge about 20 miles into McMurdo Sound to record penguins and perhaps killer whales--although it was still a little early in the season for the latter. Arrangements had been made with the Field Services Manager, Jill Vereyken, to be accompanied by Buck Tilley. Buck is a youthful 43 with sandy coloured hair and a full beard. Having attended Andover and Duke University, Buck has had a remarkably varied career and turned his hand at everything from film, farming and mining to mountain guiding and selling photographic equipment and backpacks. He produced a short feature called "Fall Line" which was nominated for an Academy Award. It was working as national sales representative for a camping gear outfit that Buck came in to contact with Antarctic Support Associates (ASA) and began coming down here as a safety instructor and member of the Search and Rescue (SAR) team. In his fourth season, Buck has become the point safety instructor and guide for those projects involving work on the sea ice and travel out the the edge, where the transition through pack ice to open water is tricky.

Buck loves an adventure and is gracious in dealing with the many people who make demands on his time and expertise. I met him at his office with Teri McLain, a biologist and laboratory administrator, and she gave us a lift with all of our gear down to the ice runway transition. We loaded up our ski-doos and sleds for the trek out: Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) clothing bags, a survival bag, two ice augers or drills for checking ice depth and for hydrophone placement, food for two days (you never know when you could get caught in a storm), and all the recording gear. Down on the ice, the wind picked up and was still coming from the sea. If the wind was blowing offshore, this would have made working at the ice edge potentially dangerous--you never know when a piece of ice could break loose and you drift, with the wind to your back, to the South Atlantic!

Buck Tilley

"The Penguin Ranch"

Our first stop was at the research site of Gerry Kooyman, the "Penguin Ranch." Here, we met Jeff Graham and Anaika Dayton, who were keeping watch over a group of 20 emperor penguins in a corral. Jeff is an ichthyologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and is currently writing a book on lungfish. Kooyman, who is a colleague at Scripps, invited him down to help with the emperor penguin research, which is well underway at the ranch and at a site nearly 200 miles distant near Cape Washington. Jeff has an irreverent sense of humour and welcomed us in for a visit. Anaika Dayton is an Antarctic "legacy:" her father Paul is a research biologist and diver who has made many trips down here and her brother Gage worked on the ice in 1993. A recent graduate from the University of California at Berkeley, Anaika is contemplating a career in veternary medicine. The opportunity to come to Antarctica was the result of a last minute opening and she jumped at it.

Buck and I stayed for about half an hour and talked about our plans for the ice edge over the next two days. Both Jeff and Anaika had been watching their penguin charges for the last week and expressed interest in joining us on our trip out the following day. They had been in camp for some time and looked like they need a spell of relief. After a snack, Buck and I fired up the ski-doos and made for the ice edge, about 6 miles beyond the Penguin Ranch.

The wind blew steadily. As we left the ranch behind, the sea ice began to change; features of broken and older ice formed ridges and knolls. Some of these were drifted over in snow and others appeared as frozen waves. Faint and faded tracks of snow machines and Sprytes wended their way across cracks and ridges, occasionally crossed by the footprints of emperor penguins. We rode into the sun and individual snowflakes and crystals shimmered like gems as we raced along. Every now and then we came across a sastrugi--a long and somewhat shallow snow dune, and the snowmobiles would jump.

After about twenty minutes, we saw what appeared as a cresting wave of ice in the distance and the horizon was scattered with islands of isolated, trapped icebergs. As we pulled up, there was a distinct edge or crack in the ice and the frozen wake of the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a research vessel that had skirted the ice edge a week earlier--dropping off supplies and scientists and picking up others from McMurdo before heading out again. The ship's wake was a fractured maze of tilted pieces of ice, blown snow and scoured ice surface, with slush pools where emperor penguins and Weddell seals had maintained access to the water below. At the time the ship had passed through, killer whales and leopard seals had taken advantage of the broken ice to search for prey. The whales had since moved back out to open ocean and the leopard seals to haunt the ice floes of loose pack ice. The Weddell seals and penguins were reasonably safe from these predators. Several seals were hauled out on the ice and a group of penguins were active around a 15 by 8 foot hole in the ice.

Emperor penguins at an ice hole.

Penguins using their beaks to get a grip on the ice as they leave the water.

Buck drilled the ice to assess the depth and we charted a route across to the diving pool. The ice was thicker than we anticipated, but still a cautious foray out was in order. I set up my tape recorder within 10 feet of the diving hole and we bored a couple of holes for the hydrophones to either side. The recordings were fair, but not great, as the wind swirled around the dive hole. I was already planning to try again tomorrow.

"Now, I'll make a deal with you. If these guys start coming out of the water all at the same time, we head out as well." Buck was watching the penguins and concerned about any exodus in the offing. Sure enough, a few minutes passed and the birds cleared the brim of the hole, leaping out of the water and landing on their bellies, with a thud and skid. Those that struggled a bit used their beaks to get a grip on the ice and hauled themselves out. Something was up; we stood up and laughed nervously. Something had gotten our attention, but Buck figured that it was not a leopard seal.

The sun angled across the sky towards mountains and a horizon that it would not cross. A lone emperor stared off into the distance away from the others. The temperature was dropping and the wind increasing. We called it a day and headed back to the Penguin Ranch and on the McMurdo.

Lone emperor penguin the sea ice edge