Antarctica: Second and Third Gentoo Penguin Colonies

 

On this day, we visited two different Gentoo penguin colonies. There were penguin chicks with almost every parent. You can see them in most of the photos below, except the ones where the parent is rushing out to catch some fish or coming home from eating krill (tiny shrimp-like creatures that are key to the entire Antarctic food chain), squid, and fish. 

Dinner time. The tongue is just as bright orange as the beak. I thought that was kind of surprising. Also, the tongue is like a cat's tongue with sharp spikes curving back towards the throat.  They're called papillae, and they help with catching prey.   

A chick pushing its head into the throat of its parent to get food may be a bit disturbing, but it's nothing compared with the videos they showed during the recap presentation that night. Someone had videos of  the semi-digested fish paste oozing out of the parent's throat and into the chick's mouth. Ick! In this photo, you can see the papillae (that's a fun word) on the parent's tongue in even more detail. 

Most of the time, the chicks seemed to be enjoying the warmth and security of a parent's belly. 

More chicks burrowing under bellies. All four of these parents have a chick under there. Fun how they're all facing the same way. 

It's not just a penguin photo, it's an Antarctica penguin photo. The setting is as important to me as the animals.  

Love this amazing glacier face combined with the penguins.

That afternoon, we moved on to a different landing site. In the photo, you can see a guide standing in a Zodiac, just below a rare bit of direct sunlight hitting the glacier face. The glacier is even larger than it looks, as he's not as close to the face as it looks like in this photo. Safety demands keeping a safe distance away from glaciers, as they could calve without warning; creating a huge wave that could capsize or swamp nearby boats. 

The glacier is breaking up into chunks because it's sliding over a large hump of rock underneath. 

This is a Weddell seal that we saw when we arrived at the next site. You can tell the difference between this and a leopard seal by the shape of the face and jaw.  The lower jaw of a leopard seal is bizarrely large and deep. The Weddell seal has the cuter whisker face. 

Funny how they look so comfortable lying on a lumpy bed of ice. They have no fear of the nearby people and boats. 

After getting a good look at this seal, and watching a Minke whale play with another Zodiac, we landed and hung out with the local penguins. 

They would often decide to squawk for a few seconds. 

I saw them point their beak to the sky quite a few times also. Maybe they're just stretching their necks. I like the water and glacier in the background. 

Coming home from fishing. 

Here's a quick video of a couple of penguins on one of the many penguin highways at the colony. Once a few penguins take the same path, the snow and ice are compacted, which makes it easier to walk there. After that, more and more take the same path until it turns into a highway they all like to take. These guys were so cute. You can hear me reminding someone to give them room (as the guides had told us to) because everyone gets so excited to see a penguin coming so close that they often end up standing right in the path of the poor confused penguin. 

Also audible in the background - the otherworldly sound of all the penguins doing their various cries, . 

We saw this whale on the way out of the bay. You can see the roiled water where another whale dove a second before. 

Links to other Antarctica posts:

First Antarctica post, including video of the epic 80 MPH storm we lived through.

Second Antarctica post, with spectacular icebergs in the sun. 

Third Antarctica post, about passing through the narrow channel called the Gullet.

Lots more penguin photos.

Antarctica: Gentoo Penguin Colony

Our penguin colony excursion was amazing, if eye-watering. We could smell it from the Zodiac long before we landed. Once we arrived on shore, you simply had to try to block it out of your mind, which wasn't always easy. Happily, the sounds and activities all around made for compelling distractions. Parent and chick below. I wouldn't say "mother and chick" because the mother and father share responsibilities for the chick. They alternate minding the chick and going for food. 

This is how the colony looked as we approached. The hard blue ice of the glacier, exposed by wind, fractures, and melting, can be seen in the back. The middle ground is snow with red and yellow algae growing in it, while the penguins are perched mainly on the black bedrock in the foreground. 

Three families of penguins, with the left parent feeding the juvenile by regurgitation. 

I think he got tired and decided to rest.  

Jennifer got this great shot with her phone. 

  

Whenever they walk on land, they look like they can barely keep their balance, but I saw them do some pretty tough maneuvers jumping from rock to rock. Didn't see any fall over. 

The uneven feathers are a sign of molting, when they get new feathers. Penguin molting is called "catastrophic molting" because it happens all over the whole body at once, which is unusual.   

Two parent-child pairs in this one. I like how the one on the right has a rock to add to his or her nest. Also, I love that mountain in the back. No rock is visible. It completely lost the battle with snow and ice. 

Most of the chicks were nearly full size, as we were there in late Antarctic summer, meaning the chicks hatched months ago.  

It was gray and cold, with a tiny bit of rain, during our visit to this Gentoo penguin colony. Gentoos have a red beak and a white mark on the head behind the eyes. Watching all these penguins in the cold rain made me question my concept of comfort. This was some of the best weather they see all year: a bit of sunlight and relatively warm temperatures. In fact, since their blubber keeps them perfectly comfortable in near-freezing water, they may think of 35 degrees Fahrenheit as too damned hot. 

Penguin Rock Band - with the vocalist up front, the awkward adolescent molting, the lazy guy lying down, and the thoughtful one staring at the sea in back. 

Sometimes they seemed to get a burst of energy and just start flapping their wings and wagging their tail wildly. This one's tail is wagging so fast it's just a blur. 

At first I didn't like the red, green, and yellow algae spoiling the perfect blue of the ice, but then I started to like the variety of color it provides. Some might accuse me of thinking in terms of what it looks like in photos before anything else. 

The glacier face may appear close in this photo, but is about a mile away. 

I feared this guy would slip or trip, but he knew what he was doing. He even hopped up onto a higher rock and one point. Not bad. 

Can't resist that insane deep glacier ice. We're seeing a cross section of the compacted hard ice that's usually buried under snow. 

Here's a short video from Jennifer of penguins on a "penguin highway."  It's sort of like deer trails. It's easier to walk on packed snow, so after a few go the same way, the rest continue using the same path, until it gets packed into a groove that becomes a trail used by the whole colony. 

A couple of short videos of penguins porpoising. I'm no videographer yet. Anyway, it's tough to figure out where they're going to surface next! 

That's all the penguins for this post, but a couple more fun things from that day. These are from later the same evening. We saw whales on a regular basis. I wonder what these waters would have looked like back in the late 1800's, when there were still millions of whales.  

A couple of short videos of whales diving.

Something we chose NOT to do - the Polar Plunge - see the guy in midair? We were amazed at how many people chose to do it. They had a tether on, plus two guides in a Zodiac ready for rescue. In the closer Zodiac, a ship photographer in an orange life vest was taking photos. 

In this photo, guides were out practicing cold water rescues when a whale passed by. There were several whales working this bay that night. This provides a hint of the relative sizes of the whale, the people, and the glacier behind. If you're looking at this on a phone, you'll probably need to zoom in. 

That's it for the first penguin post! 

Click here for even more penguin photos, plus videos in the next post. 

Click here for my first Antarctica post, including video of the epic 80 MPH storm we lived through.

Click here for my second Antarctica post, with spectacular icebergs in the sun. 

Click here for my third Antarctica post, about passing through the narrow channel called the Gullet.

Antarctica: Through the Gunnel and Gullet

The night after the storm, the ship turned north to pass through The Gunnel and the Gullet. These are two narrow channels between Adelaide Island and the Antarctic continent. They're often blocked by sea ice or icebergs, but we were fortunate to be able to get through. This meant the ship was close to icebergs and glaciers on both sides at times. One of the expedition staff explained that the ship had access to up-to-date satellite photos of the area to check if there were too many icebergs before venturing in that direction.

I can't get over these two-hundred foot towers of ice that looked like they could fall at any minute. Towers of glacier ice like this are called "seracs", but usually they're the size of houses, not office buildings. I love the way the ice looks like it's been sliced perfectly smoothly just to the right of the seracs, as if by a giant with a knife. It's amazing how the slight blue tint in the cracks is intensified by blue reflecting on blue.   

I loved being so close to the glaciers and icebergs. Here's Jennifer with a giant glacier behind her, with snow on the deck from the night before. 

Here's a photo that gives a sense of how close we were to the icebergs. Notice how the water looks so green where light reflects back up from the underwater parts of the iceberg. 

I finally figured out what glacier ice looks like - fractured obsidian. It's denser and harder than typical ice because it's compacted over tens, hundreds, or even thousands, of years. The massive amount of weight of all the snow and ice above squeezes the air bubbles out. Air bubbles are white, so when they are removed, the faint blue color becomes stronger. 

I love this one, because it's so clear that the bottom 90 percent of this iceberg is compacted glacier ice, with the less compacted snow making up the icing on the cake. I'm guessing this snow was deposited on the iceberg after it broke off.  Amazing! 

One of the first times I got a halfway decent shot of a whale.  

Again, not the greatest whale photo, but you can see there are two together here. Their fins are clearly visible at center left and center right. It was pretty common to see two together. 

Probably my best crashing wave shot. This wave is likely about fifty to sixty feet high. I took lots, but you never know when a big one is coming until it's too late. So, you get a lot of duds. Pretty pleased with this one though. 

This is sea ice. Each year, the sea ice breaks up and melts during the spring and summer, and then starts to refreeze every winter. This will all form into a solid sheet of ice covering many square miles around the coast during winter. The captain said he's seen a change over the years. When he arrives in November (which is spring), there is usually less sea ice than years ago. Satellites have been used to photograph and study the extent of Antarctic sea ice since 1978.  

Some sea ice and where some of it came from - breaking up glaciers and icebergs. 

I like the lighting on this one, with the dark sky behind the white and light blue iceberg.  

OK - I know a lot of people may be getting tired of icebergs, but don't worry - penguins are next.

Links to more Antarctica photography (plus a few videos)...

Antarctica penguin photos and videos.

Even more penguin photos, and a couple of videos.

Incredible Antarctica iceberg photography.

Fascinating Antarctica photos and a video of a storm from my first post.

Antarctica: Northbound Between Adelaide Island and the Antarctic Peninsula

After being buffeted by hurricane force winds all night south of Adelaide Island off the coast of the southern Antarctic Peninsula, the ship turned north, searching for, but failing to find, anywhere with mild enough winds to allow us to go on a Zodiac excursion. We just continued heading north all day.    

Icebergs are like natural sculptures to me. Each tells a story of how it came to have its shape. This one has been melting and getting smoothed out for a long time, but it fractured more recently, exposing sharp edges again. These icebergs are so large, and the air and water here is so consistently near or below freezing, they can take years to melt. 

If the photos are too large to fit on your monitor, you can click any one for a popup gallery, and scroll with left and right arrow keys. 

Some of the icebergs are the size of several city blocks. It's hard to comprehend the scale without something man-made in the photo. I liked the cloud formations in this one. I think the higher white ones may be borderline lenticular clouds, shaped by unique weather conditions of the region. 

This photo is a closer view of the iceberg above. For some unknown reason, I am absolutely fascinated with these beautiful, immense structures with a mass and solidity rivaling rock, yet are made of water.  Their size, textures, shapes, and of course, many shades of blue make me happy for some unexplainable reason. I get an indefinable thrill just being in their presence. I want to be near them. 

I love how you can see the edge of the glacier halfway up this mountain, where there used to be thick layers of ice that broke off and fell into the sea and became icebergs. It's also cool how the top of the mountain in the rear just fades into the mists created by the cold and wind and altitude. 

This is an example of a tabular iceberg. These icebergs form when a land glacier extends out into the sea a long distance before the tides flex up and down enough to finally break it free from the mother glacier. They float away, but may end up hitting the bottom and remain in one place until they melt enough to float again. 

We started to see whales as we headed through this passage. Almost all of the whales we saw were humpback whales. 

Just wow. The smooth lower part of this one is amazing. Yet, the top shows how it was rough it was before the waves started to wear down the edges. 

This is one iceberg, with a gap at the surface.  

Some icebergs have this strange pattern that looks like the result of melting water running down the surface. This one shows the incredible deep, clear blue that we saw everywhere we went. 

This was likely one giant iceberg, and may even still be one giant iceberg. Another tabular one that used to be the "tongue" of a glacier. 

This one looks like it is actually land, like a cliff at the edge of the land. Like they're the white Cliffs of Moor in Ireland, or something. This was one of the few times we had sunlight on the trip. Sadly, it was cloudy, raining, or snowing for almost all of our trip. But, this is to be expected when you're traveling to the bottom of the earth.  

Many more photos to come, but this was a great day. I promise there will be penguins eventually! 

Click here to see my first set of Antarctica photos, including the storm video.

Click here for the third set of Antarctica photos, with more stunning icebergs and glaciers.

Click here for the the fourth set - penguins, penguins, penguins!

More penguins at two more sites.