A terrifically Orca-strated show.

I’m not one to use superlatives easy, and cringe at TV shows featuring people yelling their excitement with screechy voices, but last Wednesday I actually was one of those people, because I witnessed the best wildlife viewing I’ve ever done.

Our galley area is blessed with a lot of windows which look out over our pier and the parts of the ocean close to station that are called Hero inlet and Arthur Harbor. With many eyeballs occasionally glancing at the water, interesting actions stand a good chance of being noticed. So when someone mentioned that there was a minke whale in the harbor, a lot of people were at the ready to see if they could spot it too. Quickly it became apparent that it wasn’t a minke, but that it was an orca (both have dorsal fins, but the orca fin is bigger) and then it turned out that that were several. There was at least one male in there with a very big dorsal fin and then some others. When they proceeded to do their spy hopping behavior (rising out of the water vertically to be able to take a look at the area above the water) it became clear that their number must have been 8 or 9. They spotted a young crab eater seal who was lying on an ice floe right across from our pier some 50 feet away. At that point the orcas started cooperating in earnest in their attempt to reach the seal. By now it had been announced twice over the station loudspeakers that there was wildlife viewing, so everyone in town was watching. It was even better than a documentary because the orcas were everywhere and we had a much broader vision than a camera lens would have had. The orcas were popping up on all sides of the ice floe with some of them being really close to the seal, who was brave (or stupid) enough to charge toward the killer whale who was closest to it and make a biting motion. At one point the big male made a big wave and reduced the floe to just a small part of its initial size, but the seal was still not caught. Then somehow the orcas seemed to loose interest a little bit and the seal disappeared in the water and lived to see another day. Afterwards the orcas still did a lot of patrolling around and further entering Hero inlet. Some came really close to the people standing on the pier thus making it even easier for all the folks to get their pictures.
I was filming from inside for the first bit, but did not get super good images, also because I was on radio watch and had to communicate with the bird researchers who were out on their mission to check in on penguins and giant petrels. I did tell them that a spectacular show was going on and they bee lined for station immediately.
This was really the best I will ever see. So many of them hunting and so nearby, what a great show. I hope the ice cover will hang around for a little bit longer and give us some more viewing pleasure. 
When the birders later came in at the end of the day, they'd had had an extra  bonus in the form of a leopard seal who was toying with a young elephant seal. It took its sweet time biting it and dragging it under and letting it go again, while the seal seemed to be immobile and in a state of shock.  They have some great GoPro images. A couple of days later they recognized the “little”
fellow between the elephant seals that like to come up on our boat ramp, so that seal as well had survived even though it had numerous scars on its body.







This video was shot by Susan McCarthy who is
here to write a book about sheathbills, but who
was just as thrilled as the rest of us to see this
spectacle.

This video here might be off a little less quality, but shows a better overview of what was happening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3PVUrU_u4c

These pictures are from some of my colleagues who were kind enough to share them with others.

One of the orcas swam really close to the boathouse.

The spy hopping in action, and the seal defending itself.
When you look at the video's it seems at times that it wasn't
all that concerned, but maybe that's because its very young
and hasn't learned about orcas yet..

The orcas were working together really well, surrounding
the seal on all sides. At this stage in the game, the ice floe
has broken up considerably already.

The bird researchers came back to station to watch all of this
from nearby. This image really shows the size of the orcas
(the fact that this person seems to not be looking at the animal
right next to him is because there was so many other orcas
to keep track of.

The bird researches did have front row seats though.

Season's beginnings

By now it has been some time since I started a new season at Palmer Station and it certainly has been a long time since I’ve written anything on the blog here. It’s high time for an update. This 2015_2016 summer season will be my tenth season working in Antarctica and working for the USAP. After doing McMurdo 6 times, a spot opened in 2012 at Palmer Station and Sheri agreed that I should take that opportunity  and she might be able to join me in a next year. For a variety of reasons I’ve enjoyed life and work here much much better than I did in "dirty old" McMurdo and I have not looked back since. So you might think that after so many years there will be very few new things left, but that is not the case.

New this year was the fact that it was very uncertain if we were going to be able to get to station at all. When we arrived at the beginning of October (which is the end of the winter) there was still a large area of frozen ocean around in the direct vicinity off station which could possibly be too much to break through. Our vessel is an icebreaker (ABS A1 class ), but it meets its limits with 1 foot thick (30 cm) new ice (as opposed to multi year ice) and we received word from station that ice around station was easily 3 feet thick. Scenarios were made dealing with the possibility of not being able to get close to station. The most likely one seemed to be that we would come within a mile or two of Palmer and after which we would continue our travels on foot over the ice.  Meetings were called and instructions were given on what to do and what to bring in case of this alternative way of traveling.

My berthing.

The Galley. With so little to do during the voyage, the meals
become an important part of the routine.

The gym. I think that staying active while at sea helps fight
off sea sickness. Of course working out can be a bit of a
challenge in rough seas; doing push-ups for instance are
super easy one moment and very hard the next moment.

Shower in the berthing.
Can be hard to do
when the seas are
rough, because how
can you hold on and
wash yourself at the
same time?

We get a chance to help with science
a little bit. Here I am helping  to
process water samples.

Launching a CTD which measures Conductivity, 
Temperature and Depth. Thanks to the LMG this data set
now spans decades.

Excited onlookers.

I don’t think it has happened very often in recent history that the LMG was not able to make it to station, but I do remember that in my second year it happened once that there was so much tightly packed drift ice that the boat could not reach us. At that time we were watching from station the ship go back and forth multiple times,  but every time it made some space the ice closed up immediately around it again and made further progress impossible. They turned around and went back to Chile again. It took a couple of weeks before the people who were scheduled to leave station on that ship were able to hitch a ride from a visiting cruise ship as their (not too shabby) way to get back home.

You can really see the thickness of the ice.

With this knowledge in mind and reaching the ice edge everybody was curious if we were going to be able to break through or not and -now more than ever- we were up on the bridge trying to get the best views possible. You would expect that snow on top of the ice makes it easier for the icebreaker, but the opposite is actually the case, because of the friction it creates. Another effect of the snow on top of the ice was that it dampened the sounds quite a bit. Nothing like the big cracking and crunching sounds which we were expecting. It was going to take very many back and forth motions of the ship, but we were going to make it. It turned out that even though the ice was very thick at places, the top layer was not very solid and thus not as strong as was feared. Meanwhile I think that secretly the captain was delighted, because it gave him a chance to give his personnel an excellent training on how to break ice. After a half a day and a full night of chopping up the ice and making a big turning basin we were able to dock the boat at the pier, much to the relief of most people on board, but even more to the relief of the winter staff on station, because they were ready to leave after many a month of working there.

Working on making a big turning basin.

This picture was taken a couple of
days after arrival and shows well how
much ice there is around station.

Click here is the video of the LMG breaking ice doesn't play