December 18, 1999

Recording Adelie penguins on Torgersen Island. (Photo by Steve Dunbar).

Late last night Andy Young popped into the galley, "You guys have got to see this...the glacier is purple and green!" Sure enough, in the slanting midnight sun across Arthur Harbor, the Marr Ice Piedmont was a resonant glow of white with irridescent green veins, malachite planes with a violet and lilac coverlet of snow receding to the north and east. Glacial ice crackled in the lapping waters around Station. I turned in at 1:30am, in the diffuse twilight that is our night.

At 11:30am the Inmarsat telephone rang and I was delighted to hear the voice of Moniek Darge, a musician, composer and co-director of the Stichting Logos Foundation, Center for New Music Production in Gent, Belgium. She was moderating a round-table discussion and call-in to Antarctica as part of the "Occasions de Travail" exhibition at the New International Cultural Centre (NICC) in Antwerp. A room full of folks were on hand at the gallery and I could discern a burst of applause when we connected! Steve and I answered questions about the Antarctica 2000 project and described our setting to people half a world away.

Adelie penguin feeding a chick.

The day was shaping up to be another beauty: soft light and water like glass. The relative absence of wind these past few days has been a blessing--a real gift for sound recording. With this in mind, Steve and I headed to nearby Torgersen Island--named for Torstein Torgersen, the first mate aboard the Norsel who was the first person to enter Arthur Harbor in 1955. The island is home to several Adelie penguin rookeries. Pete Duley had mentioned to us that chicks were hatching and that there was a lot of activity, and great peeping sounds!

Pete and his colleagues, Erik Chapman and Michèle Rosenshield will be joined on Monday by the project's Principal Investigator, Bill Fraser, and team member, Donna Patterson, when the Laurence M. Gould returns to Palmer Station. Their study forms part of an inter-disciplinary undertaking called the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) on the Antarctic Marine Ecosystem: An Ice-Dominated Environment. This particular group has been examining seabird communities, with a particular emphasis on the sources and quantities of food they consume. Their research involves numerous colonies of pelagic birds scattered throughout the surrounding islands including, Adelie, gentoo and chinstrap penguins, south polar and brown skuas, blue-eyed shags, Wilson's storm petrels, giant petrels, Antarctic terns and kelp gulls. Of all the crews on Station, they probably rack up the most frequent boating miles in Arthur Harbor and beyond. Pete, Michèle and Erik make daily rounds of colonies and nesting sites with several goals in mind. They are trying to determine whether birds return to the same site for nesting, year after year and if they remain with the same mate. They also look at how colony boundaries expand and contract from year to year, with fluctuations in population. With regard to Adelie penguins, the study includes analyzing stomach contents of a handful of individuals each day. How these remarkable creatures actually survive in this harsh environment is still the subject of scientific enquiry: what do they feed on? how much do they eat? how often to they venture into subfreezing water to forage? how far do they wander in search of krill and fish? While much of the LTER ornithology work is undertaken via Zodiac from Palmer Station, a couple of scientists will join the Laurence M. Gould for a month's cruise in January to conduct research further afield.

"The Lynns--LTER 0013"

Michèle Rosenshield

Erik Chapman

Pete Duley

Sorting through Adelie penguin stomach contents...its a krill a minute!

Steve and I rounded to the north of Torgersen, sighting a couple of moorings which were marked by a series of read dots on the rocky shore. Pete and company were on the island, doing their counts and collecting food samples from individual Adelies. A slight breezed carried the acrid smell of guano our way: we had arrived. The nesting sites were astir with activity as birds came and went, exchanging tending duties. The island is littered with shards of rock, snow streaked with algae and the reddish stains of krill. Lichens enclaves of mosses and tufts of grass reveal another dimension of life. Steve had picked out some good site for possible recording on earlier reconnaissance outings; we settled into a nice lee spot amongst a group of nesting birds. I listened to the raucous ratcheting calls of ecstatic displays, the peeping of chicks begging for food and the chink, chink, chink of little feet making their way across the stone strewn slopes. As always there was considerable traffic in pebbles and rock for nests. I wonder how many tons of real estate changes beaks everyday in a large colony?

Adelies eye the Rycote Windjammer (at left)

I had the good fortune to spend several days at the Adelie penguin colony at Cape Bird in McMurdo Sound several years ago, and am familiar with these wonderful creatures. They are easy to approach and think nothing of wandering up to you in mutual curiosity. I carefully placed my microphones in the vicinity of several nests. The penguins craned their necks, mumbled and one bird gave the grey, furry windscreen an exploratory poke with its beak: no worries, and she goes about her business. We linger for an hour listening to this unusual soundscape.

In the Antarctic, wind is pretty much a constant feature of the soundscape. Even on our "still" day, we had a breeze of several knots. While wind has its own poetry, it can also distort other sounds and ruin a good recording of animal sounds--particularly delicate and quiet ones. I am grateful to the folks at Rycote for equipping us with the latest technology in wind protection for recording--the Windjammer. The craftsmanship, ruggedness, durability and ease of field use in extreme conditions is a real advantage and has given us a flexibility when it comes to choosing sites which are often barely accessible.

Back at Station, it is the usual Saturday afternoon: "house mouse," or community cleaning, the weekly Station meeting, followed by dinner and GASH--after dinner cleanup. Everyone is expected to chip in with cleaning up and we sign up for a weekly rotation. Steve and I are on for tonight.

Recently "turtled" iceberg in Arthur Harbor.

In the evening, Andy Young has offered to take a group up to Mt. Williams on snow machines. It is a 3 hour round trip over the Marr Ice Piedmont. Steve and I offer to take a group out to an elephant seal haul out site on the north side of Old Palmer Station, about 2 kilometres away. Five of us weigh down our Mark III Zodiac and we putter across Arthur Harbor. We circle through Elephant Rocks, land briefly and then move on to Old Palmer. Just around the cove from the abandoned settlement is a slight gap in the terrain: Elephant Alley. This naturally protected haul out is well-travelled and the ground worn by seal traffic. Several groups are hauled out and individuals are piled on top of one another--a dominant bull with a harem of females, as well as several gatherings of subadults. The giant pinnipeds are molting and their coats are a mottled mange of fur and skin. The fetid rank of their fecies rises up from the vale. Wilson's storm petrels flit in and out of nests, buried deep in chinks of rock. Kelp gulls and terns scream above the scree and, below, the waves lap at the shore. Bulls bellow from time to time and a few of the subadults test each other in mock displays. For the most part they sleep, occasionally stirring with agitation as thigmotactic responses ripple through the group. We record for 30 minutes, listening to some of the more strange, powerful and deep throaty sounds of their chortling roars.

I look around from time to time at my fellow travellers. They defer to my request for silence and each, unto their own, sits and marvels at what a unique place Antarctica is. On the homeword stretch, we stop to look at the iceberg that "turtled" the other day. The underside is now exposed at the surface, revealing long, graceful striations that were sculpted by the waves and swell of the sea.