After two day at sea with lots of ice, fog, wind and waves we made it to our first landing in Antarctica. We visited Halfmoon Island which is on the South Shetland Island archipelago near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.  This small island was covered in snow with the only snow free places occupied by nesting Chinstrap penguins. Chinstrap penguins are one of the three brush-tail penguins. They are named so because of their long tail feathers that look like a brush.  They are a little larger than about one and a half feet tall and weigh about 7 to 9 pounds. Chinstrap penguins are the smallest of the three brushtail penguins. They have a black back and white breast and black cap on the top of their heads. They get their name from the strip of black feathers the runs from their head and under their chin. During the summer time Chinstrap penguins can be found breeding all along the Antarctic Peninsula, the South Shetland, South Orkney and South Sandwich Islands. We believe that during the winter time Chinstrap penguins migrate far away from land at sea to parts of the Southern Ocean that do not have much sea ice. I am very excited to collect tail feather sample from this breeding site to better understand exactly where they travel during their migrations. As tail feathers are grown during the winter, we can examine them using stable isotopes to learn about their diets and patterns of migration during the winter.

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