Ice, Penguins and Stars

 

         Once again it has been a whole month since my last Post and midwinters day does seem a long time ago. July has been in all honesty a bit of a grind, with lots of us feeling like its Groundhog Day each morning. Whilst in reality no two days are exactly the same there are lots of similarities. Whether it is the week-end or a week day we pretty much have the same routine, see the same people, view the same sights, hear the same roaring wind. There are occasionally opportunities to venture out into the field or travel to the huts for an overnight trip but the last month has been cold and dark and this tends to suck some of the motivation out of you to get organised and go and do it.

    However, there has been one trip we have all been falling over ourselves to go and do this last month... the trip to visit the Auster Emperor Penguin Colony!! Mawson station is the only Australian Antarctic Station close enough to an Emperor colony to be able to visit. But we can't just jump in a Hagglunds tracked vehicle and go and visit whenever we like. We are only allowed six visits per month... and a visit is a visit if you are there for ten minutes or ten hours. So to enable everyone on station to see them, and still keep the station running with our minimum required personnel, it takes a bit of planning and shuffling. After all there are only 20 of us here so we can only have 10 of us at a time out in the field at any one time.

         Auster colony is actually named after the aircraft ( an Auster ) that was being flown by the Australians who discovered the colony in the 1950s. It takes about 2 hours of driving over the sea ice to get to Macey Island ( where we can stay overnight in the hut there if you choose ) and then another hour to drive to the Colony. 

Below: Macey Island and Macey Hut

                                 

   

Below: The last bit of the drive into Auster


        So as not to upset the breeding birds, we must park around a kilometre from the breeding huddle and then walk in. Its a spectacular sight walking past enormous icebergs frozen into the sea ice, forming walls beside us. After 10 minutes the bergs part a little and a wide space opens up to the south and you can just make out the black bodies all huddled together to keep warm. 

Below: Leaving the Haggs and starting to walk to the Colony


    When our party of eight expeditioners arrived, there was already one of the Emperors making tracks to see who was coming to visit them! Apparently their hearing is pretty good and we were fortunate to have a beautiful sunny day with very little wind. We are not allowed to get closer than 200 metres to the huddle but if the birds leave the huddle to investigate us we can allow them to get within 5 metres. Any closer and we have to backtrack to keep our distance. There is a big focus at present on Avian Bird Flu and one of our tasks when we do visit is to look for signs of sick or dead penguins. Fortunately we could see no signs of this on our visit.

Below: Our first penguin visitor protesting about something..



 The penguins that came to visit are most likely non breeding males who are not incubating eggs. The other males who are incubating must be very careful not to drop their eggs on the ice as the well below freezing temperatures can kill the chicks in the eggs very quickly. Air temperature when we were there was around -25C. These sorts of temperatures also play havoc with your cameras. If you have an LCD display you will quickly notice the display start to blur the view as the liquid crystal begins to freeze and eventually stops altogether. A couple of the videos here are a little jumpy due to the cold!

Below: Getting inspected by the locals



      Apparently there can be up to 12000 breeding pairs at the Auster colony. It was very hard to tell from where we were how many penguins were in the huddle but considering this was just the males it would be a big group by the time the chicks hatch and the females return from their feeding after laying the eggs now cared for by the males. The huddle moves slowly around and you can see where they have been by the big poo stain on the ice that follows them. They looked to have moved about 1 km from where the huddle first formed. The chicks will be hatching now ( early August ) so by the time we visit again there will be lots of little fluff balls around. We will still not be able to approach the huddle or chicks until perhaps November when the chicks will be adolescents and able to wander around themselves without their parents looking over their shoulders.



         After about 90 minutes it was getting cold and we needed to get back to the station as it gets dark pretty early. On the way back we stopped and had a look at a "Jadeberg". We had seen these spectacular icebergs on the voyage down to Mawson on the Nuyina. This one was frozen into the sea ice so we could get a bit closer. The basic rule though is that you stay two times the height of the berg away from it. They have a nasty habit on suddenly deciding to roll over for no apparent reason , breaking up all the sea ice around it and making you more wet and cold than you want to be. That's not to mention that sometimes bits of them just fall off and want to squash you flat.

Below: Jade berg near Macey Island


Sunset on the drive back to Station


    Driving the Haggs on the sea ice can be very pleasant when it is flat and the weather is nice but not so nice when its not. The below contrasts the start of the day driving out to Auster and then the weather we had on the way back.


    So with the excitement for the month out of the way we returned to Groundhog Day for a lot of the month. Still, there are Auroras about, stars in the skies, walks on the sea ice on Horseshoe harbour and currently we, along with just about every other station in Antarctica, are currently filming our entry for the Antarctic Film Festival! 
    There are a few sections but have have chosen to enter the 48 Hour film festival.. basically you are given five particular elements ( such as an object  - Can opener, thing - Dinosuar, Quote - " Not all who wander are lost " and two others I can't remember ) and you have forty eight hours to film, edit and produce your entry. We have been pretty organised and should get it done. It's a lot of fun to see how the story changes as we go and the things we end up putting in along the way. After all the entries from all the international stations are in, everyone gets sent all the films and gets to vote on who wins what sections.

    Other things to do to to keep the Groundhogs away include throwing boiling water into the air when the air is -20C something with the result below.


And also getting more footage of sunsets, stars moving across the skies and Auroras and icebergs.

Below: Sunset over Welch Island



Below: Auroras over the fuel farm



Below: Half Moon rises over the ice plateau east of the Station



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