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antarctica | - under construction November 2004 - more photos coming soon - Emperors on ice -
Scott Base begins the Antarctic winter
with 300 visitors in elegant dress
The end of the summer at Scott Base came suddenly in early February. One moment the base was noisy and bursting at the seams with people and projects around the clock in the perpetual daylight of the Antarctic summer; the next it was empty and echoing as the winter-over team of 12 were left to take up their winter routines.
With the departure of the summer people the Antarctic seemed to come closer; there was a sense of exposure that was both exhilarating and threatening. It was a time to whittle back the exuberant activity of the summer to an underlying structure of necessary routine to keep at bay the encroaching immensity of cold and dark that was the Antarctic winter.
For now the sun began to dip behind the mountains and each day for the next two months the daylight hours would progressively shorten by some 25 minutes until in late April, when the sun would finally set, to remain below the horizon for four months of winter.
Yet while light lasted it was a magic time at Scott Base, for the Antarctic wildlife came visiting.
The sea ice immediately in front of the base had appeared to be an extension of the land: dangerous with tidal crack and the occasional saltwater-melt pool, but relatively solid and distinctly unlike water.
So with great excitement on the last morning in February we woke to find the sea ice had `broken out' in the night, revealing the prime seashore location of Scott Base far the first time.
Out in the water among the plates of floating ice cruised the occasional whale - orca and greys - in pursuit of the seals and the 300 or more emperor penguins that congregated in large and noisy groups along the icy beach of the ice shelf, just a couple of hundred metres from the base.
The emperors were juveniles, not yet ready to join the mating scene at Cape Crozier, and were the object of many photographic expeditions from the base. A human visitor cautiously approaching a group on bended knees would be greeted with warbles of welcome to this strange new penguin, and the incongruity of their elegant dress and their waddling gait and curious antics never failed to enchant and amuse.
But as the light became lower the weather rapidly became colder and within a few weeks the sea was again frozen. With nowhere to feed, the emperors were restless and one morning they headed out to find open water, now several kilometres away. With only the 'sea-smoke' (water vapour over open water) as their guide, they evacuated - all 300 of them in one long line, soldier fashion. Or so it appeared. But on closer inspection the line was not so orderly, especially in front. The lead penguin set pace and direction for a hundred metres or so until he suddenly tired and stopped. The following penguins piled up behind him like a comedy routine from the silent movies, until one from further back would push through and take the lead, only to be chased indignantly by the original leader.
The traces of their zig-zag progression remained on the ice for many days until finally obliterated by blizzards and the encroaching dark.
[Thelma Rodgers was the first woman to winter over at Scott Base during 1978-79 and made three other summer visits as part of her scientist's role with the Geophysics Division of the DSIR.]
Written by Thelma Rodgers and published in "A Year on Ice" by Warren Herrick, Shoal Bay Press, 1997.
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