by The remote Antarctic island of Diaz Rock should have been abandoned, but when penguin experts turned their binoculars on the outcrop, tiny eyes were looking back. Guarding their ascetic stone nests came a whole colony of completely undiscovered chinstrap penguins, the charming little species that looks like it has a King’s Guard shaved skin strap tattooed on its face. The rocky sanctuary is the newest colony of penguins in Antarctica discovered to date, and is located near Astrolabe Island and the terrifying volcanic outcrop of sharp peaks known as Dragon’s Teeth.
It is said that the boat that was sailing between the stone fans “flossed” the island. But the new colony was not discovered by a dedicated scientific expedition, or by satellite images, but when the Scandinavian cruise ship Octantis I was sailing on had to change its course after a passenger became very ill.
First, the itinerary should take us to Damoy Point, a former transfer station for the British Antarctic Survey, as well as Mikkelsen Bay, which was a popular haven for sea whales caught out by treacherous katabatic winds. But with a seriously ill patient on board, the schedule was ripped up and Captain Jorgen Cardestig made a courtesy call to the nearest airport at King George Island in South Shetland for an emergency evacuation to Chile.
The passenger was successfully airlifted to hospital, but with a missed sailing day, the trip had to be rerouted from the Gerlache Strait towards the Weddell Sea, leaving the ship sailing into uncharted waters known not only to the passengers, but also to most of the passengers. crew This was an opportunity for a real off-plan exploration, and luckily, the ship was carrying penguin counters Hayley Charlton-Howard and Dr Mairi Hilton from the Antarctic conservation group Oceanites.
The Viking is known for his commitment to science, allowing a large number of researchers to tag along on his Antarctic expeditions, and he was recently awarded a chair at Cambridge University.
Under the new itinerary, the Octantis was now bound for Astrolabe Island, a three-mile-wide volcanic mass located in Bransfield Strait, with a colony of smigstrap penguins that had not been surveyed since 1987.
There are thought to be around 1.6 million pairs of chinstrap on the Antarctic Peninsula, but their numbers are falling by 1.1 per cent a year, mainly as a result of fewer krill – their main food source – due to climate change and recession sea ice.
A previous count found more than 3,000 chinstrap penguins nesting on Astrolabe but the counters were keen to find out how they were doing. So, on a sunny January morning, with calm seas and cerulean skies, we struggled into our waterproofs and life jackets and took a rigid inflatable boat to the island.
Dozing Weddell seals on the shore opened one eye to lazily glance at us, before going back to sleep. Petrol, skates and sheath poles were pouring in above them. And there, on the rocks, were thousands of chin-strap penguins, camping on steep slopes with their fluffy chicks, many having climbed up to vertiginous and seemingly uninhabitable cliff edges.
The colony was bursting at the seams and seemed to be thriving. But it wasn’t Astrolabe that was exciting the penguin counters, but nearby Diaz Rock. Penguins are often smelled before they are seen, but this time it was the pink color of their beak, rather than the grim stench, that alerted the Oceantisis team to a new location.
“We went around the back of the island to fly the drone and thought ‘it looks like it’s covered in suspicious pink stains’,” said Dr Hilton, “That’s a sign that penguins are nearby.
“When we first got there, all we could see were cormorants so we were disappointed. We got the binoculars and had a closer look. And it turned out that there were actually several chinstraps, we think between about 40 and 50 chinstrap penguin nests. So, that’s a brand new colony for us.”
She added: “A penguin colony is only found once every three to four years. So it’s a great privilege for us to be able to do that. It was a great day.”
It is a theme of Antarctica that struggle and discovery go hand in hand, with tragedy written in the landscape. We sailed close to Wiencke Island in the Gerlache Strait, named in honor of Carl August Wiencke, a German sailor who was swept to his death on the Belgian Adrien de Gerlache Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1899.
We visited Paulet Island, another large penguin colony and where the Swedish Antarctic Expedition was stranded for the winter in 1903. The remains of their stone cabin can still be seen as well as a pile built at the highest point to attract the attention of the rescuers.
In 1915, Ernest Shackleton targeted the island after the Endurance sank in the Weddell Sea, hoping to use stores left behind by the Swedish crew, but had drifted too far east.
Not far from us is Danco Island, which commemorates Emile Danco who died of a heart condition after being forced to spend the long winter in Antarctica trapped in the pack ice with his friends from Belgium. On that trip, penguins were herded to death and eaten to ward off scurvy during the sunless months, kept on leashes as pets, and even slanged over the Belgian side as feathered fanners, to prevent placed on ice grates against the wooden hull.
Today, under the Antarctic Treaty, all 18 species of penguins are legally protected and it is illegal to hunt them, collect their eggs or disturb the birds in any way.
On our own trip we saw over 300,000, the seas spinning often in a moving penguin soup, and the animals going in and out of the water in a characteristic called the porpoise, a behavior practiced by dolphins and whales, but not there were, strangely enough, porpoises.
In addition to chinstraps, there are two other species of penguins on the Antarctic peninsula, including the Adélies who are very playful and often flee en masse like a panicked maître-des. The gentoos emit a more inscrutable air, except when their chicks are startled by a scuba raid, when they stretch their necks out to the sky and scream in anger.
The International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) insists on strict rules for landing parties, and all stray cat hair was removed from our clothes before we left the ship and we were thoroughly hosed when we returned. Passengers are prohibited from sitting or kneeling on the ground and are instructed to keep 5 meters away from the wildlife, a complicated request when so many curious penguins want to get a closer look.
It’s been a long time since the 1980s when cruise passengers were encouraged to play golf on the side of cruise ships in the Antarctic, and shoot clay pigeons. But despite the measures, many penguins are still declining, and bird flu has now reached the region, leading to fears that tourist visits to the Antarctic will only spread disease further and exacerbate the declines.
The continent has now reached 100,000 visitors a year and there is a constant tension between conservation and tourism. Researchers on board the Viking ships are pragmatic about the influx. Doing science at the end of the world is expensive and difficult, and the only way many of them can access the area is to reach it.
On board the Octantis, scientists have access to state-of-the-art wet labs, and are reusing the ship’s former Covid PCR testing lab to run genetic tests on phytoplankton to see if populations are changing as fresh water floods into the area from glacial. melting
Elsewhere, the ships are being fitted with sonar so they can map the seabed, providing vital data on past glaciation, and Scandinavian cruise ships are the only civilian vessels in the world to be designated as official NOAA weather balloon stations / United States National Weather Service. .
Viking has also become the world’s first cruise to publish a scientific paper, after submarine passengers spotted a rare giant jellyfish – a strange 30ft creature that looks like a giant ribbon attached to a flying saucer.
Jason Hayden, chief scientist on the Viking Octantis, said: “Having this opportunity to tag along with Viking Cruises is fantastic, the funding it would take for my lab to come up with its own research vessel is almost impossible.
“When people say, ‘hey this is a great environment and you shouldn’t go there’ I say there’s something called a baseline study, and if you don’t know what the baseline is you don’t know if it’s broken. or not.
“It has to be done in a responsible way, and that’s what we do. Everyone who comes to Antarctica knows how special it is, and the more people feel that the place is special, the more it will be protected.”
In such a remote location, it is difficult to get a true picture of penguin numbers, and it could be argued that every extra set of eyes helps. Just this week, the British Antarctic Survey announced that satellite images revealed four previously unknown emperor penguin breeding sites, including a site at Halley Bay that was thought to be abandoned. Without our visit, the world would not know about the new chinstrap colony. Who knows what other colonies are waiting to be found in the next bay.
Fundamentals
Viking (0800 319 6660; viking.com) offers a 13 day / 12 night Antarctic Explorer cruise including stops in: Buenos Aires and Ushuaia from £10,095 per person for a November 2024 sailing, based on current availability.
