Penguin sledding

Wilhelmina Bay, Antarctica, Christmas Day Imagine yourself laying on your belly in the snow with your arms and feet splayed outwards. Using your belly as a sled you paddle your arms and legs to propel yourself forwards, if you do this, you are now a penguin.

Penguins will lay down on their belly and extend their front flippers while gently kicking with their toes, almost like paddling. Their smooth bellies mostly free of friction allow them to slide with relative ease. I have seen them slide down hills with glee, sometimes taking small tumbles but for the most part executing this move with grace. Should the hill be really steep they err on the side of caution and waddle down on their feet.

The tracks left by Adélie penguins made a rather long S shape in the snow, I find it hilarious as they depict exactly how this penguin gingerly sled across the frozen sea ice of Wilhelmina bay.

Moving in this fashion can be very efficient, important for both conserving energy and preventing themselves from overheating as penguins are very well insulated and overheating is a real problem on warm summer days.

Canon EOS 5D, 16-35mm f 2.8L lens, 1/125s f/8.0 ISO50 35mm

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Learning to read icebergs

Antarctic Peninsula Look at this iceberg now, then look at it after reading this and you will actually be able to read this iceberg.

There are so many stories in this photo alone I don’t know where to begin. I should start with the fact that a quick glance at an iceberg can tell us a lot about it’s history; mother nature etches a story in every crack, layer, texture and curve.

First of all this iceberg is in mostly in the same orientation it was when it first broke off the glacier it came from. The horizontal lines are the layers of snow that have been compressed into ice while the glacier was flowing down the mountain, as well the surface had an edge of snow, still built up from high precipitation, this tells us the ice is still mostly upright.

Once this huge chunk of ice was set free into the ocean, it began to melt faster than it would as a glacier. The currents and movement of the salty sea water begin eroding the bottom of the iceberg but in a smooth pattern, turning hard edges into soft curves. The “shoreline” on the iceberg is where the lapping of the waves on the surface erode the iceberg the most, creating the indentation in the middle where the smooth ice ends and the rough untouched ice begins.

As the iceberg melts and chunks fall off, the balance changes. As you can see the lower right portion of the iceberg used to be underwater because it’s smooth, it’s now above water with the new weight distribution.

This iceberg is now peppered with Adele penguins. It may be a lot of penguins who are two years old and younger; essentially spinster penguins not yet mature enough to breed. They have no obligation to be in a colony and get to spend the first two years of their life feeding and enjoying themselves. The cape petrel flying on the top right creates a point of interest in the most perfect spot, further illustrating how icebergs can be mother natures “rest stops”.

But there is more! Ice creates a mini ecosystem that krill and small copepods and crustaceans tend to cling to. Small slivers of grey dot the lower left of the iceberg betraying the presence of Antarctic Terns fishing for these small creatures. These waters are rich with life, and as desolate as an image can seem, a trained eye can see an abundance of wonderful creatures.

Take a look at the ice again, do you see what I see?

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Porcelain Adélie

One sunny antarctic day was standing on a rock at the entrance to a penguin colony in Antarctica, watching them zip around underwater with joy. One of the coolest things is that they tend to jet out of the water onto land, but I don't think they look before they leap. Every so often one would fly out onto my rock only to be extremely surprised to see me standing there, immediately and frantically trying to back-flap their way into the water. This Adélie was particularly entertaining!