Science is often a combination of good preparation, patience and calculated luck…it seems that we have all of it most of the time here in Antarctica. Preparing the route with the team to time lunch breaks and anchorages for the evening to be safe, exciting for everybody and potential acoustic recording territories for me, sounds fairly difficult but our captain somehow always manages to get it all together.
Lunch or basically everything else becomes irrelevant when there is vocalizing wildlife or sounds of the environment. So I am happy to postpone lunch for Gentoos (Pygoscelis papua), Chinstraps (Pygoscelis antarctica) and Imperial shags (Phalacrocorax atriceps) breeding together on one amazing from the ocean uprising rocky cliff with the two penguin species sitting on eggs and calling out in an ecstatic display for their partners return with the shags flying in and out to feed their already hatched chicks while chattering along. And even though conditions become a bit trickier with wind, which means adjusting the recording settings to a different filter, such successful session brings a lasting smile on my face and a calming satisfaction.
Best, flat calm sunny conditions with no other humans around to create any noise above or below water leads to perfect time on a drifting zodiac with the hydrophone down in the water to possibly catch any sounds the environment and animals can bring. But then the discovery, after two hours of recording, the cable to the amplifier and the powering batteries came loose and no actual underwater sounds were recorded. That’s a nightmare come true. Lucky enough it stayed calm and there was time to redo some of the trip to get recordings from this area. The glaciers and icebergs are impressively noisy under water, creating water current flows and dripping sounds with cracking ice and calving rumbles from time to time. And then there is the magic hour when some hand written map says whales at that area seen before and you spot them one, two, three, four no wait five humpback whales bubble net feeding on krill and little fish all around us drifting along on the Ocean Tramp with hydrophone in place to record the deep rumbles of communication from the baleen whales and the camera clicking to get the ID shots.
Humpback whales stayed with us right left no matter where you would look all evening while we sailed on, leaving the sunset behind us illuminating our donkey (Gentoos) and old printer (Chinstrap) sounding penguin friends on a 900 m long, 200 m wide and over 150 m high Iceberg.
6:30 am excited to get up and experience the silence of Telefon Bay surrounded by the volcanic mountains of Deception Island. Five Weddell seals are hauled out on several beaches around us and two Gentoo penguins rest in the vicinity of the seals. There is no wind the sun is just peeking through the clouds. Movement among the seals, some audible breathing from the nostrils visibly opening and closing 200 m away from the anchored Ocean Tramp. I had put the hydrophone in the water overnight, changing the flat batteries in the morning and just as I sat down to enjoy the silence of nature, a Weddell Seal starts to vocalise under water approaching the beach. The eerie, alien sound, more out of a Star Wars movie then from an actual animal. Beautiful! It hobbles on its belly out of the water onto land as awkward as true seals do, seeming more like a slug then an amphibious marine mammal. It keeps vocalising and looking for the best spot to rest just out of waters reach where it can dry off and heat up.
No time to rest for long before we arrive at the next perfect landing: Barrientos Island. Mixed Gentoo and Chinstrap colony and finally the long awaited Southern Elephant Seals (Mirounga leonina). David got the opportunity to be my research assistant this time and did an awesome job to video record and writing down time and distances of the vocalising penguins. On this island some of the Gentoo penguins have already chicks and it was yet another exciting and successful recording session with ecstatic displays from Gentoos and Chinstraps. It could become boring for it is perfect after perfect … but it never does!
Blog – Helen Roessler
Sound file – Weddell Seal Telefon Bay