Feature

Emperors of Antarctica

Spare a thought for the people and penguins weathering the long, dark, bitterly cold Antarctic winter. A TVNZ crew has recorded their trials and triumphs.

By Cathryn Crane, NZSM

So wrote Captain Robert Falcon Scott in 1911, after visiting Cape Crozier to collect Emperor penguin eggs. His words were recalled by TVNZ director Max Quinn 80 years later, when Quinn and soundman Don Anderson were preparing to film Cape Crozier Emperors during the long Antarctic winter night.

The filming marks the first complete winter record of the breeding cycle of Aptenodytes forsteri, the tallest and heaviest of penguins. Unlike any other penguin species in the world, the Emperors breed during the cold winter months, long after most other birds have left for the warmer north.

The crew had help from staff wintering over at Scott Base. The pair and their support personnel took 13 trips out to the penguin colony, 85 kilometres and seven hours drive from Scott Base.

The route to Cape Crozier was the longest ever flagged by the DSIR, and a satellite navigation system was used to make sure that the team stayed on track. From the base camp it took another hour of walking through steep terrain and across frozen sea-ice to get to the penguin rookery.

A hopeful crew went out to the site in late March, when the penguins were thought likely to begin arriving, only to find no sign of them. In mid-April, a search and rescue team on an exercise spotted some penguins, and a five-hour dash brought the film crew to Cozier in time to sight their first group of Emperors.

"From our hut high above the broken barrier at Cape Crozier, where the Ross Ice Shelf meets the sea, we could see at least 50 Emperors grouped together catching the last rays of the low sun," Quinn recalls. The following day, the scene disappeared behind a wall of driving snow, and the five-man team were confined to the huts watching a video of the All Blacks playing Argentina.

When they managed to struggle down the hill the following day, they found that the broken area between solid ground and the sea-ice, known as the tide crack, was too fragile to cross. Despite this, they managed to film the rather eerie arrival of a large group of birds.

"They emerged out of the blowing snow like ghosts and marched right past us for some excellent shots, made all the more dramatic by the conditions. Some would plane along on their bellies, others would waddle along on their tiny feet. It was one of the rarest and most unique sights in the animal world," says Quinn.

The penguins, already the largest of their species at 115 centimetres tall, were huge. They had spent the summer fattening themselves in preparation for the rigours of the winter breeding season.

By late April, the sun had set for the final time and almost a thousand birds were at the rookery, actively engaged in courtship rituals. The Cape Crozier rookery is the southernmost of Emperor penguin colonies, subject to harsher weather and longer darkness than elsewhere. Research on the northern rookeries indicated that mating and egg laying would be over by the end of May, but Quinn and his team gambled on the southern colony leaving things until later.

"The chances were that they would be breeding quite a bit later than our research told us," explains Quinn. "These penguins want their chicks to hatch out later, so they have a better chance to survive in the spring."

Inclement Weather

Conditions at Crozier were often difficult. In early June, the team arrived to find that 90-knot winds had tipped over the rock-filled 44-gallon drum holding down the aerial antenna. Radio communications with Scott Base became weak in the high winds and driving snow.

"The radio operator would receive more than a direct acknowledgment from Scott Base in the form of a belt of static electricity created by the wind racing past our long wire aerial. This made a continuous spark some 1.5 centimetres long. We could just about run Scott Base on that," Quinn recalls.

The storm caused other problems -- the sea-ice cracked, lacking the strength to hold humans and equipment, and the team was forced to return to Scott Base without getting any filming done. Two weeks later, they tried approaching the colony from another route, roping themselves together to cross a number of small crevasses.

"We all trooped down with the camera and sound gear on our backs, and were able to film the penguins for the first time in years in their environment," says Quinn.

By mid-July, the number of birds at the rookery had dropped to around 600. Many of the females had already left to feed out at sea while their mates incubated the large egg left behind. The females stay away for over two months, recuperating their strength and stuffing their gullets in preparation for feeding the newly-hatched chick.

"There were a lot of penguins shuffling around with eggs balanced on their toes, well covered and insulated by a large fold of skin," says Quinn. By the time the females return, the males have lost almost half their body weight. The birds continue to take turn and turn about in feeding and protecting their young.

Temperatures had dropped to below -30^oC, limiting the time for filming before the crew had to trek back to the huts to thaw out. Quinn ruefully notes that the penguins coped a lot better with the low temperatures than the humans.

Filming under the severe conditions posed a great many technical problems. All the camera equipment had to be specially insulated and heated in order to keep operating, and even then filming time was limited. A number of small electronic heaters powered by a battery belt-pack helped keep the gear warm for filming. Because of the long isolation and lack of processing facilities, the team used video instead of film.

"Even in the equipment hut with the air temperature at -15^oC, our camera and sound gear was kept in heated chilly bins," says Anderson.

Devoted Fathers

The next trip out to the colony was made in sunlight, the sun having risen on August 19th. The rookery had changed considerably in the eight-week break.

"A new noise filled the air. When the adult bird raised the flaps of feathered skin on its belly, a tiny featherless body with an awkward oversized head would poke out into the freezing air and chirp away," recalls Quinn.

About half of the eggs laid had hatched, and the male penguins were going through the ritual of handing over their chicks' charge to their mates. Oddly enough, despite having lost so much weight, the birds often showed extreme reluctance to leave the chicks.

A considerable amount of coaxing was required on the females' part to get their mates to give up their responsibilities. Quinn was pleased to be able to film this process as well as the rare sight of an Emperor chick actually hatching on the feet of its father.

The bird have more than just their partners to contend with -- other chickless penguins may try to steal their offspring.

"During those precious few seconds when the chick is on the ice, two or three `kidnappers' will charge in and totally disrupt the transfer. It's the closest thing in nature to a rugby maul," notes Quinn. With 40-kilogram birds fighting over them, the chicks are often squashed in the free-for-all.

The extra birds do have their uses -- as a wind-break. Unlike most birds, the Emperor penguins do not build nests, rather they all huddle together for warmth, taking turns to stand downwind to shelter their companions. It's a surprisingly cooperative technique which makes them amongst the least territorial of birds and which helps to ensure their survival in this, the harshest of lands.

Cathryn Crane is a freelance journalist with an interest in environmental issues.