The Global Guy

Henry Malmgren photographs an elephant seal in Antarctica.

Socially, it’s interesting to watch the integration between the summer and the remainder of the winter crews. This has really got to be the easiest transition I’ve ever seen on the ice. Most of the people who’ve arrived are old hands at this station, and those that are newbies are adjusting really quickly. Normally most of the winter crew would only stay for a couple of weeks at most, but due to mechanical problems with the ship, we’re going to have to stay until the end of October instead of the middle. This has screwed up a couple of people’s travel plans, but personally I’m thrilled. The wildlife is finally starting to come back in force, and the water has opened up enough to get out and go explore the islands again.

Last weekend was actually one of the best boating weekends I can remember down here. I probably spent about six hours out on the water driving all over the place, taking pictures of the animals, and just enjoying the feeling of being off station for a while. The water was the absolutely clearest that I’ve ever seen…when we wandered over to the shipwreck of the Bahia Paradiso we were actually able to see the entire ship sitting on the bottom, and get a real feel for how huge it was before it sank. We also saw a huge elephant seal sitting on some rocks near shore that we had to get a photo of. I’d never realized how big these guys were up close, and how mobile they really are. Apparently later in the season it’s not unusual to come across two big bulls fighting over rights to have their own harem.

Unfortunately there hasn’t been that much boating since that first day. Since last Monday, the weather has been the worst I’ve ever seen down here. It’s been nearly five straight days of winds averaging around 30 knots, gusting to about 45. We even had one hurricane force gust yesterday of 75 miles per hour! This morning the winds have died down a bit, and we’re optimistic that this Sunday will turn out to be pleasant for going outside.

Last Friday after dinner I decided to take a walk up the glacier to see if there was any open water to be spotted in the area. It was supposed to be close to a full moon, and I thought that there might be some interesting lighting conditions to use to take some photos of the station. I’d gotten distracted by some work stuff so by the time I got geared up it was already getting pretty dark. I was listening to the final couple of chapters of the new Harry Potter audio book on my mp3 player, and wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to the stuff around me. Up ahead on the trail was a big dark shape, and since it had been windy the past few days I figured a trash bag had somehow escaped and gotten away from station. I was going to put a rock on it to hold it in place till I got back down when it suddenly started growling and lunging at me. It turned out that it was a HUGE Weddell seal that looked like it was just in the beginning of labor.

Apparently it’s fairly common this time of the year for Hero inlet to become a nursery for Weddell seals, but to have one come this far inland was very unusual. I followed her tracks back to the sea ice and found two more Weddell seals on the other side of the harbor. They were all looking pretty miserable, and kept making these noises that sounded like something between a growl, a moan, and a howl. One would do it, and then the other two would reply. It was kind of like they were all in some seal Lamaze class, encouraging each other to breathe!

By this time, it was pretty dark, so I headed back to station to tell the others what I’d found. The next morning, I was out there as soon as possible. The seal on land was still there, looking even more miserable than before. She was getting very defensive about her territory, growling and lunging as soon as I entered her personal zone of safety. I quickly backed off, and left her alone to her labors. One of the other seals on the sea ice had apparently given birth during the night, but unfortunately for me she was on the other side of the inlet, and I didn’t have time to hike up the glacier just then.

Later on after work, I wandered back out to see what was going on. The new mother was looking pretty tired and unhappy. We’ve got these birds around called Antarctic Sheath-bills that are the worst opportunistic scavengers you’ll ever see. Normally they hang out around our sewer outfall taking advantage of our leftovers, but now they were harassing the new mom, trying to pick off all the afterbirth from both her and her newborn. I climbed the glacier to get over to their side of Hero inlet, and managed to get some decent photos of mom and baby. The infant was asleep, and facing the wrong way, so unfortunately these aren’t my best shots. On the way back to station I stopped by the original seal one more time to check on her, and noticed that she seemed even more miserable than before.

Sunday afternoon I finally got around to wandering out to see her again, and it turned out that sometime in the last 18 hours she’d given birth. Mom and the newborn were looking happy and healthy. I couldn’t believe the size of the infant…no wonder the mom looked so miserable! Both of them were extremely active, playing with each other, and fighting off the sheath-bills. This youngster still had the umbilical cord attached, and every so often Mom would nibble at it to see if she couldn’t get it off. I hung around and watched them playing for an hour so before heading back home to see how the pictures came out.

We’ve reached that time of the year where the weather becomes pretty much unpredictable, and as a result we’ve experienced some of the wildest swings I’ve ever seen. We started out August with a pretty heavy cover of pack ice out in the harbor, and clear skies that led to some amazingly pink sunrises. Pack ice is cool to watch because it’s so surreal…a lot of time it’s really just ice chunks floating in water that hasn’t developed it’s own solid surface yet. The ice moves en masse as the tides rise and fall, and wind will blow the bigger chunks around in a kind of aquatic ballet.

After a few days of watching the pack form tighter and tighter, the weather changed completely, and we had a few solid days of warm (around 30 degree) temperatures, and tremendous winds. Our top gust this month was around 65 knots, and we had about four solid days where the wind never dropped below 30 knots. Of course all this wind is bad for the ice pack, and we actually had a really nice warm evening with no ice right off of the pier. Now, what does one do when it’s the middle of August in Antarctica, and there is a bunch of open water? Well, you do a polar plunge and go swimming of course! Yeah, it sounds dumb, and it probably isn’t good for the cardiac system, but there’s just something invigorating about hurling yourself into below freezing water and swimming around for a few minutes (ok, seconds) and then heading for the hot tub.

Twenty-four hours later, and the temperatures were heading back down again. Three or four days of 20 degree weather with not much wind was just right to set up a nice smooth layer of ice on the ocean’s surface. If you hike up the glacier now and look out over the ocean, it’s just solid ice as far as you can see. It’s really cool, but hopefully it’ll go away in less than a month so that the ship can come back and bring us salad!

Besides the arrival of the summer crew, the upcoming month of September is usually known for the return of the local wildlife. While there have always been a few gulls and sheath-bills around, we haven’t seen any seals for at least six weeks, and no penguins have been spotted for at least four months. Well, all that started to change this month. We saw a lone seal sitting out on an ice floe just before the sea froze over completely a couple of weeks ago, and last Sunday on the coldest day of the season we got our first bunch of penguins walking toward the station. We’re not really sure where they came from, but at about 10:00 am Sunday someone radioed that there were penguins on the ice. Everyone ran out to check it out, and sure enough, there were 18 gentoo penguins marching around the point, and heading up to Hero inlet. I grabbed my camera and headed out to see what kind of photos I could get. The light was lousy…completely flat with no contrast, but out of the 100 or so shots I took, I’m very happy with about five or six of them. We haven’t seen any more since then, but we’re expecting the mass migration to Torgeson island anytime now.