Tag: Adelie penguin

The finale: the Rosenthal Islands

Erin Pickett-

The Palmer LTER 2016 research cruise has come to an end and I am back at Palmer Station. In addition to a fantastic espresso machine, Palmer Station also comes with the added benefit of more internet bandwidth and a phone to call home. I thought while the memories are still fresh and my friends and family are beginning to ask, I’d better write down a few of my favorite field adventure moments.

Thinking back, there are a few common themes that all of these favorite moments have in common, and they are; high winds and snow stinging my face, dramatic cliff faces and rocky islands, shoes covered in penguin guano, sightings of whale spouts, and seabirds I have never seen before.

Overall, there were far fewer whales seen on this cruise than there have been in the past. Luckily, I was able to keep busy anyway, because when we weren’t finding whales I was assisting the seabird team in their pursuit of penguins. Toward the end of the cruise most of the science projects happening on the ship were wrapping up and the birders and whalers were given more freedom to direct the show. This meant we were able to work with the captain of the ship to chart courses to areas where we thought we might find whales and to rarely visited islands with colonies of Adelie, gentoo, and chinstrap penguins.

The first group of islands we visited were just east of Prospect point, called the fish islands. We used a handheld GPS and hand-drawn maps to navigate around a group of small rocky islands collectively named the minnows. Carrie and Darren (the “birders”) and I hopped on and off our skiff to count the chicks and adult penguins on each island. Meanwhile, our boat driver was keeping an eye on the wind and the icebergs surrounding us so that we wouldn’t find ourselves trapped in the bay if the sea ice became packed in by strengthening winds. Our ride back to the ship that day was quite wet due to a lot of wind chop, and we spent the rest of the afternoon drying our gear out and warming up so that we would be ready to return back to the minnows that evening to collect Adelie penguin diet samples.

Giovanni Fattori (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11939457)
Prospect point is colored in red in the center of the peninsula, with Anvers Island and the Gerlache straight to the North. Image credit: Giovanni Fattori (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11939457)

Diet sampling is a critical part of the birders work during the LTER cruise. Collecting diet samples from Adelie penguins over a long time period and over large geographical distances allows us to monitor how changes in sea ice along the peninsula are impacting top predators and their prey. We had a successful trip back to the minnows that evening and collected fresh diet samples from five Adelie penguins that had just returned home from foraging trips.

Two days later we arrived at the Rosenthal islands, which are located on the west side Anvers Island. Our goal at the Rosenthal’s was to census the local penguin colonies. The Rosenthal’s were unlike anywhere else I have been yet, with jagged islands set dramatically near the base of a large glacier and waves crashing over nearby shoals and icebergs. Southern giant petrels and skuas glided over our heads while groups of penguins porpoised around us. At the first island we came to we got to see a king penguin, a rare sighting in this area.

Luckily there were six of us to count the thousands of Adelie, gentoo and chinstrap penguins that were scattered in colonies all over the islands, but it still took most of the day to complete our counts. After one last trip through the Gerlache straight at sunset, we arrived back at Palmer Station.

I hate to admit that I didn’t have my camera with me at Prospect point and at the Rosenthal’s, so until I get a few from the rest of the field team here are a few from the last week of the cruise…

It has been a month now!!

By: Logan

So it is hard to imagine that I have been at Palmer Station for a month and 2 days now. The time has flown by and I still feel like there is a lot of work to be done. The weather has been on and off for the last two weeks. We have had winds exceeding 60mph that have kept us from going out on the water. Even when the winds are non existent, we have not been able to go out as the harbor has filled up with lots of brash ice.

It has been a slow year for biopsy sampling thus far. We normally, or well at least our team last year, had about 40 biopsy samples by now. I think Doug and I have only collected 13 as of yesterday. We have only seen two whales in the last two weeks. One was a single individual and the other was a mother calf pair and wow, was that calf curios. It would come right up to the boat, practically nudging the boat with the end of its mouth. It was quite the encounter to witness.

Ari and Erin should be arriving at station on Friday, which means Doug is going to head back north. Erin will be joining me at station and we will be here until April 9th, I believe. Life on station is pretty calm, but we try and stick to a pretty tight schedule to keep ourselves on track and busy. Things can get a bit challenging down here when you find yourself engulfed with boredom. Generally, we work all morning and until dinner, and some days we will be on the water well after dinner until about 9:30pm, when the sun starts to set. After dinner then we generally hang out upstairs in the lounge, make a drink, eat popcorn, and watch movies.

This week we welcomed Dr. Bill Fraser, a famous penguin biologist to the station. He has been coming down to Palmer Station for the last 40 years. Sunday, Doug and I were invited to join his birding team and count and measure penguin and giant petrel chicks on Humble Island. It was amazing to hold a penguin chick and feel how strong they are, even when they are only a month old. We counted skua nests, chicks, and eggs on Shortcut Island with the birders later that day as well. If you are unfamiliar with skuas, all you need to know is that they are relentless, will strategically poop on you, and will smash into your face at full speed if you go near their nest. Thankfully, I was wearing a hard hat. Even with my precautions these birds still seemed to nock it off my head twice, despite having it strapped to my head. At one point we were measuring one of the chicks, I believe at nest F1, and I was bent over holding the chick so Ben, one of the birders, could measure the beak as well as the first and second primary feathers, when all of a sudden I felt something land on my shoulder. I looked up and one of the chick’s parents had decided to land on my shoulder and peck at my head for about 15 seconds. At first I hated every notion of these birds, but seeing how protective they are about their young intrigued me.

On a similar birding note, we have had four penguins jump into our boat so far. The first two made it up on to the side tube of the zodiac, quickly spun themselves around and shot back into the water. The other two made it directly into the boat and were assisted back out by Doug. One of the penguins that made it into the boat, jumped right in at our feet, getting the computer and GPS wet, stood up and looked at us, and then just stayed there. He did not care at all that we were there and just wanted to ride along for the day. Unfortunately he made it a bit challenging to do our work so we had to help him out of the boat as well.

I cannot wait to see what the next two months has to offer down here. It is a beautiful place that I cannot even fully describe. I will check in again soon.

 

 

A visit to Rothera Research Station

By: Erin Pickett

We had an eventful weekend on the LMG, visiting a British research station on Adelaide Island on Saturday and nearby Avian Island on Sunday. We arrived at Rothera Station early Saturday morning and traded most of our LTER team for a group of British scientists. The British base was very welcoming and had a full of day of crevassing, skiing, hiking and boating activities planned for us. Meanwhile, their scientists took advantage of the use of our ship for a few offshore science projects.

We “whalers” took advantage of the free time and good weather and spent the morning looking for Minke, Humpback and killer whales in the vicinity of Rothera. We had hoped to put a stop to our long streak of days without whales but unfortunately there were no whales to be seen. Despite this, we had a great morning taking photos of the many icebergs, leopard seals, Wilson’s storm petrels and blue-eyed shags in the area.

Sunday was a beautiful bluebird day and we had a gorgeous transit from Rothera around the south end of Adelaide Island to Avian Island. We left two of our LTER colleagues on Avian and they will be camping there for the week. They will be studying the island’s population of Adelie penguins, conducting diet studies and assessing reproductive success by weighing, measuring and counting Adelie chicks.

Spending a week each year on Avian Island is an important aspect the seabird component of the LTER program because Avian Island serves as a sort of “control” study site, to compare to the more rapidly changing Palmer site. The differing physical and biological conditions at each of these two sites allow scientists to assess how things like local sea-ice conditions and biological productivity affect each of the local penguin populations. There are around 80,000 Adelie penguins on Avian, so you can imagine that we could smell the krill-colored guano long before we landed on the island.

Torgersen Island Adelie Penguins

Logan: Today I had the pleasure of visiting the Torgersen Island Adelie Penguin colony. We can see the colony from station at a distance. We circled the island in the zodiac and I admired the tall peaks of jagged rock that these penguins somehow managed to traverse to get to the nesting sites. Unfortunately we had to approach the loading zone down wind of the colony, an area you do not want to be if you have a weak stomach. Immediately my stomach began to churn as I smelled the distasteful odor of Adelie guano that lined the rocky terrain in a pink shear.

We landed on the island and I quickly began to traverse the rock terrain to the peak of the island near the colony nesting sites. We were instructed earlier in the day that the chicks had already hatched and that we were to remain at distance as to not distract the parents with chicks. The Brown Skua, a large predatory bird, takes advantage of unprotected chicks, carrying them away from the colony to feed on the tiny brown fluff balls. I managed to find a good spot to sit on the rocks and turn on my GoPro and just sit and observe the activities of these beautiful birds. The noise that this colony could produce was outstanding. I watched these birds interact with each other in many different ways. Some would raise their necks high into the air as a sign of what I believed to be courtship, while others were just laid on the ground trying to stay cool. This particular colony is in decline. These penguins are an ice dependent species, and as the climate in this area continues to warm, this colony will likely disappear.

Erin, Ari, and Doug are still out on the LMG trying to place our suction cup tags on nearby humpback whales. Have not heard from them yet, but hopefully I get a call that a tag has been placed. That is all for today!!!