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Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:45:19 -0500

Mike: Penguin-Cams in Antarctica

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:02:06 -0500

In addition to my research using stable isotopes to examine the diets of penguins, during this trip I am also assisting my colleague Dr. Tom Hart from Oxford University. Tom is placing time-lapse cameras in penguin colonies all around the Southern Ocean. This is part of his “Penguin Lifelines” Project which you can learn more about at www.penguinlifelines.org. These tiny cameras last the entire year, are pointed at the breeding colony and programed to take one picture every hour. This allows us to determine when penguins return to their breeding colony at the start of the summer, when they lay their eggs, when chicks hatch and how fast they grow, and when chicks are abandoned by their parents and become independent. I am excited to work with Tom this season to collect feather and eggshells samples from colonies that also have cameras to relate the above indices of breeding biology with dietary information derived from stable isotope analyses.

We spent the day working at several penguin colonies around the Errera Channel along the Western Antarctic Peninsula. We first went to Orne Harbour to collect samples and replace the batteries and memory card of a penguin-cam that has been taking pictures of a chinstrap penguin colony (pictured above). This location was also special because it was the first time on the trip that we were able to set foot on the continent of Antarctica. The previous research sites we have visited up to now were all small offshore islands. It was a warm and sunny day and because these chinstrap penguins are breeding high up on a ridge line we had a beautiful view of the mountainous coastline that dominates this part of the Antarctic Peninsula.

After working at the Chinstrap penguin colony in Orne Harbour, we visited nearby Cuverville Island which is home to a large colony (about 4,000 breeding pairs) of gentoo penguins. There was a penguin-cam at this site which had been taking pictures of this penguin breeding colony for over one year! However, while this camera was still working after more than a year in Antarctica we decides to replace it with a new one just in case. We also constructed a stronger base for the camera, which is made with a thick aluminum pole set into a chicken-wire basket filled with rocks. This is an easy-to-make but strong camera mounting system that can stand up to the harsh climate of Antarctica. It will be great to come back next year and see all the great pictures that the many cameras we set up have taken!

Mike: Antarctic Landfall

Mon, 7 Jan 2013 11:41:57 -0500

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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Mike: South into the Ice

Sat, 5 Jan 2013 11:36:34 -0500

The Antarctic convergence is the area where currents from the Southern Ocean meet with warmers waters from the north and this biological boundary circles the entire Antarctic. This meeting of water masses leads to a highly dynamic area with upwelling of nutrient and increases in phytoplankton production. Many marine birds such as albatrosses and petrels are found around this region taking advantage of the concentrated food resources. For example, Wandering Albatross are commonly found foraging around this region. We saw many from the ship as we sailed south from South Georgia. These birds breed in on Sub-Antarctic Islands like South Georgia and can fly very long distances throughout the Southern Ocean to find food.

Wandering albatross
We had planned to go next to the South Orkney Islands, which are just north and east of the Antarctic Peninsula. We had hoped to visit the Argentine Research Station “Orcadas” located on Laurie Island in the South Orkney Islands. At the start of my trip I had met with an Argentine colleague in Buenos Aries, who gave me several satellite tags to take to Orcadas. They plan to deploy on Adélie penguins to determine their winter foraging ranges. The Argentine supply ship which was to take them was delayed and would not be able to deliver them in time to Orcadas. Giving the tags to me was the last chance to get the tags to the station this season. In addition, I wanted to collect feather samples from the South Orkney Islands to better understand the diets and migratory patterns of the penguins that lived there.

Picture of Orcadas Base (right) and or the South Orkney Islands map (left) from Wikipedia
However as we traveled south we came across large bands of sea ice and small icebergs that blocked out path. This led us to divert our course westward before heading south again. However, the large amount of ice was slowing down the speed of the ship and the Captain and Expedition Leader decided to abandon our plans to visit the South Orkney Islands. Sadly, no other ships have been able to reach the South Orkney Islands this season due the large amount of ice that has floated up from the Antarctic. We then changed course westward for the South Shetlands Islands which are to the north and west of the Antarctic Peninsula. Sadly, I was not able to deliver the satellite tags to Orcadas this season. Even so, the Argentine researchers will be able to collect feather samples for me and ship them back to the United States and the end of the season. When working in the Antarctic it is often the ice, wind, snow and waves that dictate where you can get to and what science objectives you can achieve.

Ice and Icebergs

Mike: Sealers, Whalers & Biologists

Thu, 3 Jan 2013 13:42:00 -0500

Soon after Cook landed, British and American sealing ships came to the island to exploit the large number of fur seals present on South Georgia. Within 50 years seal populations were over exploited making sealing uneconomical. The large number of whales around South Georgia also led to a rapid increase in whaling around the island. The first land-based whaling station was established at Grytviken within Cumberland Bay on the north east side of the island in 1904. A total of six whaling stations were operating on the island soon after. All these sites were abandoned by the 1960’s as whale stocks declined and large–factory whaling ships became more efficient than land based stations.

Grytviken Whaling Station

Today we sailed to the abandoned whaling station at Grytviken. It is located within a small cove called King Edward Cove within the larger Cumberland Bay. In addition to being the oldest land-based whaling station it is also famous for having the great Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton buried in its small cemetery. Shackleton died here of a heart-attack while preparing for his last Antarctic expedition in 1922.

Shackleton’s Grave

This cove is also home to a British research station at King Edward Point. Tom and I had a chance to visit the station and meet with some of our colleagues. Together, we all hiked over to nearby Maiviken Cove where we installed a time-lapse camera on a breeding colony of Gentoo penguins. We also sampled body feathers and tail feathers from 20 breeding adults at this colony. Penguin body feathers are grown at the end of the breeding season and tail feathers are grown slowly during the early winter months. By analyzing the stable isotope composition of these feathers we can estimate the winter diets of Gentoo penguins at this site. We are collecting similar feather samples from all over the Southern Ocean to determine how the winter diets of Gentoo penguin differ across regions. We hope to determine how flexible the diet of this species is at both the individual and population levels to help inform us on why it is the one species in the Antarctic Peninsula that is benefiting from recent climatic warming and changes in food availability.

Gentoo Penguin

We are leaving South Georgia soon… Next stop: Antarctica!

Mike: King Penguins on South Georgia

Wed, 2 Jan 2013 13:34:41 -0500

After spending a couple days at sea, the ship reached the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia. The island is long (170 km), narrow (2-40 km wide) and mountainous with many glaciers. South Georgia lies along the Scotia Arc and is about 1400 km south and east of the Falkland Islands. The island is home to a vast concentration of wildlife, including penguins, albatross and seals. Today we landed on Salisbury Plain in the Bay of Isles near the northwest end of the island. This area has a large king penguin colony and many thousands of Antarctic fur seals breeding along the beaches.

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in United Kingdom (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
King penguins are the second largest extant penguin in the world and the largest breeding penguin found on South Georgia. They are almost a meter tall (about 3 feet) with a black back and a white belly. They have vivid orange patches on their black head and bright orange on their lower beak. They nest in dense colonies but do not make a nest; instead they hold their single eggs on top of their feet keeping them warm with a flap of skin near their bellies. At Salisbury Plain there are about 40,000 breeding pairs, with close to 500,000 breeding pairs on all of South Georgia. It takes nearly 14 months for king penguin to breed and raise a chick (Incubation = 2 months, chick rearing / growth until fledging = 11-12 months). This long breeding schedule means that adults can only raise about 2 chicks every three years. These birds are deep divers and have a diet mainly of squid and mesopelagic lanternfish (myctophids).

Mike and King Penguins

Today we repaired and installed a time-lapse camera that my colleague Dr. Tom Hart has installed at this breeding colony some years before. These tiny cameras last the entire year and are pointed at the breeding colony and it programed to take one picture every hour. This allows us to determine when penguins return to their breeding colony at the start of the summer, when they lay their eggs, when chicks hatch and how fast they grow, and when chicks are abandoned by their parents and become independent. This season we have been collecting feather and eggshells samples from colonies that Tom has set up cameras to relate the above indices of breeding biology with dietary information derived from stable isotope analyses. You can take a look at Tom’s website (www.penguinlifelines.org) to learn more about this project and the types of work we do with cameras.

Penguin Cam Video from Penguin Lifelines Project

Mike: Stanley, Falklands Islands

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 13:21:26 -0500

Currently the Falkland Islands are a dependency of the United Kingdoms. There were no human inhabitants on these islands in 1690 when it was first visited by Europeans. By 1776 there were settlements made by the French and English but soon after the French withdrew and gave their settlement to the Spanish. Not too long after the English then left, leaving the Spanish in control of the island until all their colonies in South America revolted some 30 years later. The United Kingdoms then reasserted their rights over the Falklands in 1833, with Stanley being established as the capital in 1843. Argentina still contests the UK’s colonization of the Falkland Islands, stating their right for possession as a former Spanish colony. They even conducted an armed invasion of the islands in 1982 but were eventually beaten back and evicted from the islands by British naval and armed forces.

Stanley
One of the most recognizable building in Stanely is Christ Church Cathedral. Built in 1892, it is made of brick and like many buildings in Stanely it has a corrugated iron roof. One the church grounds there are a four jaw bones from blue whales made into an arch. They were erected in 1933 as a gift to the community form the Falklands Islands Company to commemorate a century of British governance. The blue whale bones originated from around the South Shetlands Islands in Antarctica. One a nice day this is my favorite place to sit and look out into the Stanley harbor

(Left) Cathedral and arch, (Right) Gobe Tavern

However, this trip I did not have much time to sightsee around Stanley. I spent the whole morning getting supplies for our work in South Georgia and Antarctica and meeting with colleagues who work on penguins in the Falklands Islands. They work for a non-profit, conservation group called Falkland Conservation (www.falklandsconservation.org) and have been helping us this year to collect feather samples from Gentoo penguins in the Falkland for stable isotope analyses. I also met with Rebecka Brasso, who is a PhD student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (www.uncw.edu/penguins). She is studying mercury contamination in penguins and was in Stanely waiting for a different tourship to take her to Antarctica. It was a busy few hours on land, but we got all of our errands completed and then set sail for South Georgia….. the land of king penguins and fur seals! More about this next time!

Mike: Penguins on the Falklands Islands

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 13:21:26 -0500

There are about 2,500 people living on the Falklands Island with most of them living in the capital village of Stanley. These islands are also home to a large numbers of seabirds and marine mammals. We approached the islands from the west this morning and made our way to visit two islands: Carcass and Saunders Islands. While on these islands we saw three species of penguins and got some work done as well!
The first specie we saw was the Magellanic Penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus). This species is stands about 15 in (38 cm) tall and is black and white in color. It has a black head with white markings and a black back and white breast with a prominent black band. They nest in burrows dug into the ground, lay their eggs in October with chicks hatching about 38-40 days later.

A Magellanic Penguin

Gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) were also breeding on both islands we visited. Gentoo penguins are about 23 in (58 cm) tall. They have black backs and white bellies and a black head with a white patch above their eyes. In addition they have a very distinctive orange beak. They are found breeding throughout the Sub-Antarctic islands as well as on the Antarctic Peninsula. In The Falklands they breed on many islands in colonies ranging in size from 300-800 nests. They make their nest out of small stones or directly on the ground and lay their eggs in October with chicks hatching about 34 days later. We were able to collect eggshell and molted feather samples from Saunders Islands which we will use to examine their diets using stable isotopes. In addition I help my research partner Dr. Tom Hart install a remote camera which will take time laps photos of the Gentoo colony on Saunders Island. When we collect the memory card from this camera in one year’s time we should have a lot of information about the timing of breeding and reproductive success of Gentoo penguins at this breeding site.

A colony of Gentoo penguins on Saunders Island

In addition, at Saunders Islands there was a large colony of Rockhopper penguins (Eudyptes chrysocome). This is the smallest penguin species on the islands at about 14 in (35 cm) tall. They are black and white in color and have a black head with a distinctive crest of yellow feathers above the eyes. They form very large colonies on the Falklands and nest along steep slopes and among the tussock grasses. This species feeds on squid, fish and small crustacean called lobster krill.

A Rockhopper penguin staring me down!

Tomorrow the ship will travel to Stanley, stay tuned for more!

Mike: Getting on the Ship

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 13:51:24 -0500

The “Ocean Diamond” is run by Quark Expeditions (www.quarkexpeditions.com). The ship is 124 meters long and has a 1D ice class. This means that while it is not an ice breaker it can handle sailing around and through some of the seasonal pack ice we are sure to encounter around Antarctica. I have never been on the ship before, but based on its specs (www.quarkexpeditions.com/our-ships/ocean-diamond) it looks like a very comfortable ship. As a scientist I am used to working on research vessels which are often short on creature comforts. The Ocean Diamonds will be a great place to come back to after spending the day collecting data in the field. We head out in a couple hours so I will likely not be able to post on the blog for a couple days until I get my shipboard email account sorted. Next stop the Falkland Islands. More to come!

Ship schedule

Mike: Merry Christmas from Ushuaia

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 13:46:40 -0500

After over 24 four hours of plane flights, layovers and taxi cab transfers between airports I arrived in the city of Ushuaia, Argentina on Christmas Day at 6pm local time. It was a long trip here but luckily for me I arrived with no delays and with all of my baggage and field gear. Ushuaia is a very interesting city. It is touted as the southernmost city in the world due to its location near the extreme southern tip of South America. There are about 57,000 people who live in Ushuaia, but in the summer time the population grows due to the large number of tourist that come here. Many of these tourist come to Ushuaia to get on one of the many tourships that embark from the city and travel to the Falklands Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. During the summer there are about 30-40 ships that make these voyages, returning to Ushuaia every 10-18 days to pick up new passengers. That means at any one time there are about 3-4 tourship at the port unloading and loading people and supplies. It can be a pretty hectic place.

(Left) Giant Santa; (Right) Ushuaia sign

So imagine my surprise today as I arrived to find a very quiet Ushuaia. The roads were empty, many business and restaurants were closed and there were no tourships docked at the port. I have never been to Ushuaia on Christmas day, but I soon realized that everyone in the city was probably spending the day at home with their families. The weather was nice so I took a walk around the city. It is the middle of the summer here so even though the weather is chilly (about 45°F) there are many flowers blooming throughout the city (such as the Lupine flowers pictured here). Another exciting thing I discovered was a giant 25 foot Santa Claus which was strategically placed outside of a night club which billed itself as ?the Southernmost Discotheque in the World.? Like many other place it was also closed for Christmas. After finding one of the few restaurants that was open and having dinner I walked back to my room for a full night?s sleep. I have one more day in Ushuaia tomorrow before getting onto the ship on Dec. 27th

Lupine flowers in Ushuaia