A visit with the Emperor Penguins of Snow Hill Island

Our journey aboard the legendary icebreaker Captain Klebnikov begins in Ushuaia, billed as the southernmost city in the world. Transit through the Beagle Channel is followed by a 60-hour crossing of the infamous Drake Passage. Notorious for rolling in a seaway, icebreakers prove their worth when the water turns solid. Once the ship is locked into drifting sea ice, helicopters fly us to within a mile of the Snow Hill penguin colony. The temperature is a chilly minus eight degrees Celsius. A brisk 20-knot wind threatens to carry away the base camp refuge tent and creates a wind chill of minus 18 centigrade or zero Fahrenheit. Our feet sink into drifts of overnight snow. We are greeted on the ice by a Weddell seal and her pup. As we trek for one mile through soft snow, we are met and bemused by adult emperor penguins who seem equally curious about ourselves. Finally, we arrive at the bustling colony. Emperors breed on fast ice attached to the land, not on the land itself. South polar skewers continually patrol the skies, seeking any sign of weakness which they will exploit without mercy. Males are larger than females but have a shorter life expectancy. This may be due to the fasting period lasting as long as 134 days, while they incubate the egg and look after the chick during the winter. If a female does not show up within 10 days of the egg hatching, males will abandon the chick for self-preservation. Sleek plumage provides 80% of the insulation against temperatures as low as minus 40. Incubation lasts as long as 67 days. Emperors are seasonally monogamous, meaning that they stay faithful for one breeding cycle. At the time of our visit in mid-November, the chicks seen here are about 14 weeks old. Both male and female adults travel as far as 500 kilometers when foraging for food, covering between 51 and 903 miles per trip. Over five months, a chick needs 70 to 80 kilograms or 170 pounds of food. Prolactin can be described as a parental hormone found in many species, including our own. It is especially powerful in emperor penguins because it takes exceptional parental dedication for the males to remain on the job during the long winter and also to return 70 miles with food after being released from their incubation duties. This hormone will be switched off within four to six weeks of the scenes shown here. At that time, the adults will simply depart, leaving their young to their own devices. The line in the snow is a rope marking the limits beyond which we should not stray. It is clear that the penguins just find it intriguing. Surviving young will return to the colony at four years old and breed in their fifth year. Normal lifespan is around 20 years, but birds as old as 50 have been recorded.