SEALS PROVIDE FRENZIED, VIOLENT INTRODUCTION TO ANTARCTICA
Postmedia columnist Daphne Bramham crosses the notoriously rough Drake Passage from the Falkland Islands to South Georgia — known as the Serengeti of the Southern Ocean — to Antarctica. Her daily reports from the 18-day expedition cover issues from climate change and micro plastics in the ocean to Japan’s continuing whale hunt, the antics of penguins and the world’s wild race to tour, and exploit, this last frontier. Half a dozen leopard seals patrol the ice flows where recently fledged Adelie penguins have no idea about the danger that lies in the water.
Many of the chicks still have tufts of down on the tops of their heads — the remnants of the fluffy grey and black that they are born with. Until they moult and get waterproof feathers, they will drown if they go in the water. So, their parents head out to sea each day for krill (tiny, shrimplike crustaceans), while the chicks stay on land, waiting for their parents to bring them food.
Some of the chicks have their adult plumage and they make their wobbly way to the water, where they awkwardly dive in. They initially tend to swim more like ducks than penguins.
On a brilliant, calm, sunny day in the late Antarctic summer, the leopard seals suddenly attack. Three circled a single ice flow. All three managed a kill, grabbing the penguins by the neck and ripping them open. The penguins die immediately. But one does not, and it struggles desperately and futilely to leap back to safety.
In a frenzy, one seal leaves a dead penguin uneaten and circles around to kill another. It is unusual behaviour, according to the naturalist who is with us.
After the kill, the seals grab the penguins and bash their bodies against the surface of the water to flay their skin off.
This is our introduction to Antarctica.
Leopard seals are large and can weigh up to 600 kilograms. They have a lifespan of 26 years. They have jaws that can open to 160 degrees, which is how they can hunt penguins. Yet, like almost all of the wildlife here, the dietary mainstay is krill.
To filter the krill, the leopard seals have three-pronged molars that lock together to create a sieve.
Adelie penguins are also endemic to Antarctica. The population on this side of the continent is stable, but there are concerns about the colonies on the opposite side near the Ross Sea. In late 2017, a rookery of about 18,000 breeding pairs of Adelies on the eastern side of Antarctica suffered what scientists described as “a catastrophic breeding event.” All but two chicks died of starvation.
Cooler and rainier weather meant that the downy chicks weren’t able to stay dry and warm. But the bigger problem was that there was more sea ice than usual, which meant the parents had to travel as much as 100 kilometres farther out to sea to catch krill.
Later in the day, we finally land on Antarctica after navigating through sea ice and spectacular icebergs. Big ones, small ones, tabular ones and some glowing like turquoise blue neon signs.
At Brown Bluff, we make our way along the beach to the spot where as many as 60,000 Adelies have a colony next to a gentoo penguin rookery. It’s full of action, with starving chicks chasing down any adult that has emerged from the water. The chicks slap at one another, screaming and stumbling over the rocks.
Some Adelie chicks were so hungry they even tried getting food from a gentoo.
But this part of the Antarctic — the Antarctic Peninsula — has had more than just penguin conflicts.
Like the Falkland Islands, you make a political statement simply by saying the name of the bay. The Brits named it Hope Bay. The Argentines, who have a permanent community there, call it Esperanza.
The British were here first, establishing a research station in the 1940s. But in the early 1950s, Argentina tried to flex its muscle and assert sovereignty over a wedge of the continent that runs all the way to the South Pole.
It resulted in a brief skirmish with shots fired before peace was restored. The British continued their claim to it, but abandoned it and moved their research station further south.
Since then, Argentina has tried to advance its claim by sending pregnant women here to have their babies and building a school so that families stay for years rather than months.
Chile did the same thing in the quadrant of Antarctica that it claims. It’s a common enough tactic. Canada did a similar thing in the 1980s when it moved Inuit to the High Arctic to bolster its sovereignty claim.
Of course, for now, nobody really owns Antarctica. For nearly 60 years, it has been governed by consensus by the 29 nations that operate research stations on the continent.
Under the Antarctic Treaty’s protocol, there can be no resource development and no nuclear testing. It is a place of peace and science.