We are woken every morning by an announcement on the ship PA system. Fortunately, Howard, the expedition leader, has quite a gentle voice. His wake-up call with the weather and daily program is more Radio 4 than Heidi Hi. This is a good thing because otherwise I would need to work out how to disconnect the speaker in the cabin. It can be a bit of a guess as to what time we are going to be woken. This particular morning it was before dawn.
Sunrise proved to be quite spectacular making the early start worthwhile. Tabular icebergs (the big flat ones) were floating past. Seabirds were flying around the ship. A pod of killer whales went past. It was all turning out to be an extremely exciting morning.
After breakfast and a second pod of Orca we arrived at Cape Adare. Historically this place is extraordinarily significant. It is the site of the first ever landing on mainland Antarctica. It is also the first place anyone ever spent a winter on Antarctica. Biologically it is the location of the largest Adélie penguin rookery in the world. The first big impression Cape Adare made with me was the stink. The beach has an entire geological layer of penguin guano. Relatively few birds are here at this time of year but over 200,000 breeding pairs not so long ago. Today the sun is out and the beach area is warm, soft and vibrantly pungent underfoot.
We went ashore in zodiacs to have a look at the huts. Through the Antarctic Heritage Trust the site is registered as an Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA 159) the highest level of protection available under the terms of the Antarctic Treaty. We need to tread carefully and speak in hushed tones. In January 1895, Norwegian explorers Henrik Bull and Carsten Borchgrevink landed here. Borchgrevink claimed to be the first to step onto the Antarctic mainland. Or it might have been Leonard Kristensen, ship captain, as cited in expedition accounts. Or Alexander von Tunzelmann, a 17 yo deck hand who claimed he jumped out to steady the boat for the others. Borchgrevink came back in 1899 as leader of the Southern Cross Expedition, also known as the British Antarctic Expedition. They erected two huts in which to spend the winter. The very first winterers and the very first buildings in Antarctica. This was the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Later, Scott and Shackleton would become famous for their exploits. But nobody particularly like Borchgrevink. He was Norwegian and we would have preferred a reliable British Naval Officer. He also had an abrasive personality that appeared to upset pretty much everyone he ever dealt with. These two traits led him to becoming the first Antarctic hero that you never heard of. He received some recognition thirty years later. The Royal Geographical Society admitted “justice had not been done” to his work and awarded him the Patron’s Medal.
Members of the Northern Party of Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition over-wintered at Cape Adare in 1911 and 1912. They erected one hut, which has fallen into ruin today. The Norwegian built huts have fared much better. Zoologist George Murray Levick made observations of the penguins throughout the year and was horrified. He saw “depraved behaviour” including “hooligan penguins” that exhibited homosexuality, necrophilia (mating with dead females), sexual coercion and the physical abuse of chicks. Returning to Britain, his paper Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin was deemed too graphic for the official expedition report. His lost paper was rediscovered at the Natural History Museum and published in full in 2012. What Levick regarded as “moral failings,” modern biologists consider the result of sexual inexperience in young birds and high hormonal levels during the short, intense breeding season. Life can be hard as a teenage penguin when nobody understands you.
Diane had a quick look inside the huts. Despite their enormous historical significance, they actually look like a pair of old garden sheds. We wandered around in the penguin poo for a while. Back in the day, superior quality guano was a rich source of nitrogen for fertiliser and gunpowder. Borchgrevink the unloved, had even submitted a commercial proposal to collect the droppings.
After the breeding season comes the moulting season. A catastrophic moult is critical for survival. It replaces every single feather to ensure they remain waterproof and insulated. Typically lasts between 2 and 4 weeks. Without their waterproofing, penguins cannot enter the water to hunt. To survive, they must gorge on food before the imposed fast. This can double their body weight which makes them extra tasty to predatory killer whales and leopard seals. At this time of year, most of the birds have headed off to sea. The remaining slow moulters stand around looking shaggy and a bit despondent.
We were saved from nasal assault by the offer of a zodiac cruise. This gave us the opportunity to look at some odd shaped bits of floating ice. As icebergs melt and occasionally roll over, they can assume some strange patterns. Glacial ice typically forms in annual layers. This striation combines with patterns caused by wave action, meltwater and gas bubbles to form a remarkable range of shapes and textures. We also saw a few minke whales, a few Weddell seals and the first Emperor penguin of the trip.