Symphony in black and white - and a little blue

Sunday 22 February 2009
After six days at sea I would have been happy to set foot on ANY piece of land and the bleak looking "small and rocky volcanic pile of Franklin Island" (as the online Brittanica calls it) was fine with me. This island is about 12 km long and lies a hundred or so kilometres from Ross Island, in the Ross Sea. New Zealand Land Information (LINZ) has quite a nice map of the Ross Sea area here. You can see an enlarged view by clicking on it. Franklin Island proved to be an amazing Antarctic experience. We had wonderful clear weather the rest of the time in the Ross Sea, but this day was overcast and dark, which made the island look stark and forbidding. The animals staying on it matched the colour scheme: grey Weddel seals, grey and brown skuas and black and white Adelie penguins. The other penguins we had seen so far all had some colour, either in their feathers or on their beak. But Adelies are just black and white. The island was totally covered in snow. On the shingle beach it was 30 to 60 cm deep, fresh and untouched, except for some penguin tracks and Weddell seal trails. The rest was covered in a huge ice cap. It was cold!!



The Adelies were either moulting adults or fledgelings. They were very comical when they moved around, either waddling through the snow, or to go faster they plopped down and 'swam'. Tragically, as our biologist told us, these fledgelings were born too late and because they have not yet managed to leave are unlikely to make it through winter. Their parents are not feeding them anymore, either because they have already left for the winter, or because they can't go in the water while they're moulting. These young ones went up to anything and anyone (including us tourists) to ask for food. But the adult penguins were not having a bean of it. It looks comic, but it's also a bit sad, really. I took a movie of a young one trying to cajole an adult into feeding it.



The next morning we arrived at McMurdo Sound. We were called at 6am, so we would not miss a thing. It was a glorious sunny morning. More next time.