 Another amazing week in the Antarctic... I'm 90% healthy again &
the weather is back to sunny & beautiful once again. This
weekend we had an amazing windstorm. I finally got to experience
the famous Antarctic catabatic winds coming off the glaciers. We
headed out to work on Saturday to do our usual skua territory
checks and seal census in the horizontal rain. I quit early
because the winds were getting too strong to stand up & I
certainly couldn't read numbers on the skua bands. We ended up
at Arctowski, the Polish station for our weekly shower & dinner.
All of us were soaked to the bone & the winds continued to get
stronger. At dinner, the wind gauge was clocking gusts of
>100mph every few minutes. All night long the buildings were
shaking. The Poles radio antenna blew down & the Hungarian tent
camp was completely destroyed by the wind, but we fared pretty
well. Sunday the winds continued to be strong as Stacey & I
attempted to hike to all of the remaining skua territories. We
gave up early again & struggled home across the glacier. Copa is
much more protected. Our winds were only 50 mph & no damage to
camp. Penguins fared ok too. Our satellite birds continue to
evade us. Apparently one is back in our area. There is now a
reward out of a breakfast in bed for whoever finds one of these
birds. We've named one of them "Waffles". The other is "Quiche",
but continued searches of 4000 penguin backs have failed to find
the elusive penguins. Oh well. We're wrapping up our work.
Today was a day full of data entry, cleaning out our food
supplies, & I got the honor of doing a 4 hr skua hike in the
sun. On Monday, we went for an overnight camping trip to
Paradise Cove to stay with our Hungarian buddies & to finish
some of our penguin & skua work. We have to try to catch 50-100
fledging chinstrap chicks from the beach. We only managed to
find 27 during our 3 morning & evening checks, so we'll have to
go back on Friday, but we did manage to have an excellent party
with the Hungarians. On Tuesday, we helped them set up to do
some underwater filming of swimming fur seals & elephant seals.
We can't wait to see their finished documentary.
It's hard to believe we only have a week and a half left
down here. The Brazilians decided to bump Carnival one week
early so we can celebrate with them. We only have a couple big
tasks left to do. One is Giant Petrel Chick banding - currently
scheduled for this Saturday - showers immediately after because
apparently the chicks have a special defensive mechanism. When
you pick them up, they puke up a concentrated oily slime which
is so foul smelling that it can't be washed out of clothes. The
adults are huge - 8 ft wingspan, big bodies. They mostly
scavenge for rotting carcasses on the beach. The chicks are
still fuzzy & cute. We also have a few more skua chicks to band,
a final check of all the territories, & our camp closing
inventory & clean up. We were a little worried that we wouldn't
get it all done, but I think we're on schedule. I hope all is
well up north & you had a happy Valentine's day. Enjoy the end
of February. Lots of love from Copa.
Love, Iris
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