Happy New Year from Cape Shirreff! I hope you had a fun New Year's Eve &
are off to a great start of 2002. We had a nice holiday season down here,
celebrating Christmas & New Years with the Chileans. Unfortunately the
Cape has been rainy & wet instead of beautiful & snow covered. Today was a
great day though. A layer of fog blanketed the Cape, but it was warm & calm &
the sun occasionally broke through. The Cape is bustling with life. Most of
the penguin, skua & gull chicks have hatched & are keeping their parents busy
collecting groceries. Consequently, the penguin work has started full
force. Today we began putting out radio transmitters on gentoos & chinstraps. We
glue the 1 inch long transmitter to the penguin's back with epoxy, then
our receiver/computer keeps track of whether the bird is at its nest or at sea
foraging. It's nice that the computer does all of the data collection for
us so we can stay in bed. Actually, once we get that study up & running, we
turn our sights to diet sampling - more popularly known as "penguin
puking." Through Jan & Feb we will be analyzing stomach contents of 60 penguins. In
the old days, this would involve killing the bird & cutting open its
stomach, but Wayne, my boss, has perfected a technique to sample without
harming the bird. We catch the penguin on its way back to its nest with a
full belly of food. While holding the bird, we carefully slide a tube into
its throat & fill its stomach with warm water. When it is full, we turn
the bird over a basin & massage its belly until it regurgitates all of the
goodies. We then weigh & release the bird which has to return to sea to
get more food for its chick while we spend the next few hours weighing,
measuring & sorting through the penguin vomit. Very glamorous work! This
year in addition to searching for fish otoliths (ear bones) & measuring
whole krill, we actually have to count krill eyeballs from the digested
portion. The whole ordeal is not really a pleasant experience for anyone
(us or the birds), but it is one of the more important pieces of research
we are doing to evaluate the condition of the Antarctic seas. This year
should be particularly interesting because it seems like the food sources are
limited. Antarctic krill (a small shrimp-like crustacean) is the main food
source for the majority of marine animals down here from fish to penguins
to seals. This year seems to be a bad krill year causing many penguin nests
to fail. Judging from the color of the penguin guano, the birds' diets may be
shifting to eat more fish instead. It will be interesting to see what they
are actually eating compared to last year. Of course our regular penguin
work continues - daily nest checks, long hikes to visit skua territories,
weighing chicks, & searching the colonies & beaches for birds with flipper
bands. It's great to be so busy again. I'm much happier when I have a lot
to do. We'll stay pretty busy until the end of February when birds start to
fledge & head off to sea. Last week we did our second round of fur seal
pup weights - catching & weighing 100 pups. They are growing fast, but
still are incredibly cute & entertaining. I have one of the most amazing
commutes to work. Every day I hike 2 km along a rugged & beautiful coastline
watching hundreds of fur seals living their lives - bulls herding females, females
calling their pups, pups wrestling each other in pools & chasing me down
the beach. Scattered amongst the fur seals are piles of enormous elephant
seals occasionally rearing up & fighting with each other, but mostly sleeping
contentedly, farting & belching. Out in the bay I sometimes glimpse
penguins leaping out of the water as they porpoise back to shore. These days we're
also seeing more & more leopard seals out in the bay grabbing fur seal
pups who boldly take their first swim into the deeper water. It's a pretty
amazing walk despite the frequent wind, rain & snow. I love hiking &
exploring around the cape. Every day there is something new to see. I hope
all is well & you are having a great January. Enjoy the new year & stay in
touch. I love getting email & regular mail down here. Our first batch
arrives on Jan 15. I can't wait. We also get resupplied with fresh fruit &
vegetables. Yahoo.
Take care.
Love, Iris
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