All About Antarctica – PENGUINS!!!

NOTE:  We're now in Valparaiso, Chile.  But I have about 15 or so blogs from our cruise, so I'm going to post these a few per day, in chronological order.  I'll try to remember to add this note so that people know to go back a few days.

8, 9, 10, and 11 February 2020

12 February 2020

We left Antarctica several hours early because a huge storm was heading toward Drake’s Passage.  This is one of the most turbulent waterways in the world, because the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet here – the currents combine from different directions, causing huge swells and uneven currents from all directions.  Also, the two oceans have different temperatures and even different salinity levels, so that adds to the clash of waters.  All of this combines to cause those giant swells, crazy currents, and weather systems that add to the turbulence. 

We had a day or two of very bouncy seas, and major rocking of the ship.  High seas with swells of 5 to 6 meters (that’s about 15 to 18 feet!), and sustained winds of 40-50 mph.  At times it was like riding a roller coaster, especially in the dining room which is located at the aft end of the ship.  On the other hand, some of us enjoy roller coasters, so I thought it was pretty fun!

Tomorrow we’ll sail around Cape Horn during the daylight hours, and by Friday we’ll be back to visiting a variety of ports and walking on land once again.  It has been about a week since we’ve walked on land, so that always makes for an interesting time.

Our talks about Antarctica continue, and I find it all fascinating.

For example, part of Antarctica is warming, part of it is getting colder.  The day after we left the Antarctic waters, the high of the day was 20 C (70 F) – the warmest day ever in this continent!!  The hole in the ozone layer is keeping Antarctica cold, but at the same time is warming the Antarctic Peninsula, the northernmost section of Antarctica, where much of the ice is melting.  The ice shelves (the floating ice attached to the peninsula) are breaking off more quickly that previously due to climate change.  Rising sea temperatures melt the ice shelves underneath, and warmer air temperatures melt the surface of the ice.  So these shelves are breaking up into tabular ice bergs, those huge squared off ice bergs that we saw.

Once the ice shelves break off, the land ice moves eight times faster into the ocean than when the ice shelves were there!  Eight times faster!  Not that ice sheets move quickly, but still, this means glacial ice movement is accelerating quickly!  And all of this adds more fresh water to the oceans, which can reduce salinity as well as raises the sea levels.

Over all, 87% of Antarctic glaciers are retreating.  Well, melting so that they are getting smaller – it isn’t as if they are backing up.  But since the edges are pulling back, geologists call it retreating.

In West Antarctica, the ice sheet is shrinking, but the East Antarctica ice sheet is growing.  However, in total the Antarctic is losing the ice sheets/glaciers, adding to sea level rise.

In addition, the Antarctic Ocean is warming, and frozen sea water, called sea ice, is melting as well. 

One of the big questions is how will this affect Antarctic flora and fauna.  I know, we don’t think about any plant life in the Antarctic, but there are lichens and mosses that grow on some of the hills and even on the ice.  There has been a rapid expansion of two flowering plants in the region, as well as an invasive species of plant that is spreading through the peninsula. 

Climate change is changing the breeding patterns of penguins; less ice means they need to move their breeding grounds, especially for penguins such as the Emperors that breed on the ice itself.  Also, there have been cases when a huge ice berg has blocked a penguin colony’s access to their feeding ground, which affected not only the chicks but also the adult population.  So increasing large ice bergs may impact entire penguin colonies.

We had a previous talk about penguins, comparing how different species of penguins have very parenting behaviors.  Nearly all penguins breed on land – only the Emperors breed on ice.  Penguins in warm climates burrow in the ground to keep cool, while penguins in cooler climates make nests directly on the ground.  But all are along coastlines, so the adults have access to the oceans for their food.

Many of the various parenting practices seem to be related to whether the penguins feed on inshore or offshore sea creatures.  Those penguins that feed inshore, close to their breeding grounds, tend to raise two chicks, and both parents share equally in incubating the nest as well as feeding the chicks.  Penguins that feed far offshore, necessitating long periods of time away from the nest, tend to have a pattern of the female laying one or two eggs, then the male incubating the eggs while the female is out at sea feeding for weeks at a time.  The male may leave the nest briefly to feed, but he basically stays on the nest until the female returns.

And then there are the Emperor penguins – the female lays one egg during the winter, on the ice.  The male keeps the egg on his feet under his belly, so it doesn’t freeze, and he holds that egg for two months as he waddles around.  The female, having expended so much energy producing that one egg, needs to go to sea to feed.  And they feed far offshore.  The male basically incubates and then raises the chick by himself or with the other males in the colony.

In general, penguins spent about 50% of their lives at sea.  Breeding and raising the chicks may take half a year, and then the penguins and the fledglings, now old enough to travel, spend the other half of the year at sea.  Adelle penguins, found only in Antarctica, travel hundreds of kilometers north to avoid the harsh Antarctic winters.  Close to 25% of those adults do not survive this arduous migration each year.  A very sad statistic, but penguins don’t have an easy life.

Penguins are often raised in a group called a creche, guarded by adults.  The chicks are gathered together for safety while the parents go off fishing for food, but also, the chicks clustered together often keep each other quite warm.  There are several kinds of sea birds that will eat penguin eggs as well as the very young chicks, so the parent penguins do their best to protect their eggs and young, and have even been known to kill some of the sea birds that try to attack the babies.

We’ve seen penguins all over, although our first day was FULL of penguins on ice floes.  There might be one lonely penguin on a good sized chunk of ice, or there might be as many as twenty or so penguins.  Most of the penguins we’ve seen here are the Adelle penguins. (Pronounced ah-DELL-lee, not ah-DELL.  That final e isn’t silent.)

The fact that they’re Adelle penguins is why we’re seeing them so far from land – Adelles are offshore feeders, swimming quite a way out to sea to find food.  In fact, after laying her two eggs, female Adelles will be out at sea for about two weeks, eating their fill after all the energy spent producing those two eggs. 

But even when spending two weeks swimming around chasing fish and krill, and avoiding predators, penguins need rest.  So they swim up to ice floes and hop on, using those strong wings as fins to propel them out of the water.  They’ll sleep, rest, warm up in the sun, and from the sounds they make, catch up on all the penguin news and gossip.

When penguins are fishing, they dive and swim around.  The “porpoising,” swimming in leaps out of the water like porpoises, is an escape maneuver when trying to avoid predators like seals and orcas.  Or scary things like cruise ships with noisy propellers.  It isn’t easy photographing porpoising penguins, but I managed to catch a few.

There is something about penguins that is just universally appealing.  They are adorable and comical at the same time, with their little tuxedoed bodies and giant fin-like feet, waddling around on their very stubby legs.  Their pear-shaped bodies, with stores of fat, help them survive the harsh elements and long periods of fasting due to breeding behaviors or distant swims during the annual migrations. 

In fact, some penguin males have a mating call, where they raise their heads and bellow.  The chubbier and more corpulent the male, the deeper his voice when calling females.  And the females know that the stouter the penguin, the better for incubating their eggs while they go off to fish.  So yes, in the penguin world, fatter is better. 

We saw Adelle as well as southern gentoo penguin colonies on gravelly beaches and hills.  Even in Antarctica, there are some mosses and lichen that grow on the hills, or even on some of the ice, making cushiony environments for nesting and raising their young.  On Deception Island, an active volcanic island, the penguins nest on the gravel beaches and hills behind the beach.  Further to the right of their colony is a section of volcanic ash covering ice as the glaciers creep toward the sea – but the penguins know that this is not a safe place to nest, and they seem to instinctively avoid this part of the beach. 

We even saw some chinstrap penguins swimming (and porpoising) close to the ship! 

The penguins all were just going about their usual penguin lives – eating, breeding, swimming, avoiding danger, and hanging out on ice floes.  We didn’t see any Emperors, even though one colony is on the northern tip of the peninsula.  It may be the time of year when they all are elsewhere.  It would have been nice, but four species of penguins in one trip is wonderful!

And I think my penguin socks helped call all the penguins, so that we saw an abundance of them!