Penguin sightings!!!

They say that penguin sightings usually start around mid-December, and on a really good year you might see some in November. By the middle of October I had two separate sightings, so this summer will hopefully be a fantastic one for seeing these little guys. Granted, one of my two 'sightings' was kind of cheating, because I went to the penguin rookery, where you are guaranteed to see them after the beginning of October.

The first pictures you see with the one Adelie Penguin were taken on October 14th, I believe. We were working out at Willy Field installing the lighting for the runway, when this little critter came sliding along on his belly. When I first saw the dark object on the horizon, I said to my boss that there was a dog running over here, and how strange that was. He told me I was an idiot, and then reminded me where I was in the world, which made it click. It was a penguin coming this way! When they are sliding on their bellies they just look like a black dog in the distance. I ran to the truck to get my camera, and he just kept getting closer. When he got about 50 feet away, my boss Chad said, "Get on your knees, and sometimes they will get curious and come right up to you." Sure enough, next thing I know and I am staring face to face at this guy, about 10 feet from me.

According to the Antarctic Treaty, we are not allowed to get close enough to any wildlife that we alter their normal behavior. Basically, if wildlife sees us, we are too close. Apparently there is a loophole though, because I have been told by several different people that if you stop when they are far away and they come up to you, there is nothing you can do but stay still. If you get up and move farther away, they will definitely see you, so you are supposed to just stay there and stay still. Works for me.

This guy was totally curious about me. He slid right over to me, stopped about 10 feet away, and began cycles of standing and lying down, all while staring right at me. Not afraid at all. I was like a little kid. I wish you all could have seen the elated look on my face. To see a penguin in its natural environment was blowing me away. The crazy part was that we were about 20 miles from the nearest sea ice and access to the ocean, and he was heading farther away from it. He was 20 miles onto the Ross Ice Shelf and not turning back. Nobody seems to know why they do this, but it is somewhat common they tell me.

"I can leave a happy man now! Whenever I end up leaving, I will be okay with it," I tell Chad. He just laughs.

A week or two later I got the lucky privaledge of working through my day off (the second of several 'days off' I had to work). 12 hours of work on this particular Sunday. I was wiring up a building for some scientists that was leaving on a sled Monday morning, getting towed out onto the sea ice. The scientists were mapping the floor of McMurdo Sound, and this building was going to house all of there instruments. At the end of a LONG day, I told them they were good to go and my work there was done. It was a that point when one of them asked me, "Was this your day off?" They were very thankful when I told them it was, and just before I left one of them asked me if I would be interested in a trip out to Cape Royds that evening. "Are you kidding me?" Of course I want to go. Cape Royds is where the Adelie Penguin rookery is, and it has been closed to everyone but the scientists for five years now. They told me we would leave at 8:00pm. This seemed a little late to me because it is about 10 miles past Cape Evans, and the Rec trip to Cape Evans is an all day outing. When I asked how long it would take to get there they looked at me, laughed a little and said, "only 35 minutes if you are going 60mph the whole way."

We were riding snowmobiles out there! 32 miles one way accross the sea ice. They asked if I had my snowmobile training yet, which I hadn't. I thought this might pose a problem, but they said we would just make this trip a bit of a 'secret'. They got five snowmobiles for the five of us, and one quick crash course later we were off. They said there weren't going to be that many penguins yet because it was still so early in the season, and they don't usually show up in large numbers until the sea ice retreats further. When we got there there were at least a thousand penguins, and I said, 'I thought there weren't going to be that many." They said that in mid-December there would be about 50 -75 thousand. Nonetheless, it was amazing. There were so many, all making these very strange noises. It was like listening to a penguin symphony. This area is an ASPA, or Antarctic Specially Preserved Area, which means the only one who have access to it are scientists and by special permit only. I was sooo lucky to be there. I have learned a very important lesson here: ALWAYS work on your day off if it is for an important science group! Who knows what kind of cool stuff they can show you. I hope you all like these pictures. I have about a hundred more from the same sightings, but these are a few of the best.

If you read this earlier, you would have noticed an unusually large number of typos. Sorry about that. I was finishing this at 3 in the morning last night, and didn't proof read it before I posted. Oh, and for Lauren, the photo of me on the snowmobile was taken on the way back to McMurdo at about 12:30am. That's as dark as it gets!