Penguins:
We had encounters with 4 species of penguins, Magellanic, Chinstrap, Gentoo
and Adelie.
Gentoo Penguin: Jack's favorites were the laid-back gentoos and
he managed to get some pleasing underwater shots of their high speed "flight".
Very few gentoos were breeding this year (e.g. a few nests on the rocks
around Port Lockroy). Even these are probably too late to be successful.
From a close look at layers in the snow at Port Lockroy, Dave Burkitt thinks
that there was very heavy snow in November, AFTER the gentoos had come
ashore to lay. We saw plenty of egg shell but no chicks at most colonies
that confirmed Dave's view of events that breeding had been disturbed.
The Antarctic Peninsula is showing exaggerated signs of global warming
and this unseasonal snow may be part of that pattern.
Abstract
art in Antarctica.
Chinstrap Penguin:
Spunky chinstraps were most in abundance, giving Deception Island a vegetated
crew-cut appearance because there were so many (1-2 million estimate).
Jack spent a lot of film trying to catch them porpoising in mid air, which
was the habitual way we saw them while travelling.
Deception Island colony: There may be 1 million chinstraps here. Numbers
have apparently grown since whaling days, as these penguins feed on krill
and don't have as much competition from whales as they once did. I was
staggered at human greed when I learnt that 30,000 blue whales were slaughtered
in a single season (1930-1931) in this area. Blue whale numbers have shown
no sign of recovering since that blow and krill-eating penguins seem to
be one of the beneficiaries.
Adelie Penguins:
By far the stroppiest of the four species that we encountered. For
some reason we often saw singlet adelies in flocks of gentoos or chinstraps.
Ecstasy Call
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