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Explorers venture into uncharted territory to help scientists map Antarctica’s emperor penguin population from space
January 17, 2013 | 4
Polar explorer Alain Hubert and researchers from Antarctica’s Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Station use skidoos to reach a remote emperor penguin colony with 9,000 members on Antarctica’s Ragnhild Coast early last month....[More]
Thousands of emperor penguins group together on an icy Antarctic plain. Alain Hubert, expedition leader for the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica station, chief mechanic Kristof Soete and Swiss mountain guide Raphael Richard arrived at the never-before-visited colony a little before midnight....[More]
A group of emperor penguins stand together near the East Antarctic coast. With an estimated 4.5-degree Celsius temperature rise across the continent over the last 50 years, Antarctica is one of the fastest warming regions of the globe....[More]
Adult and chick emperor penguins stand together. The colony is one of seven large groups of emperor penguins that were first discovered by scientists at the British Antarctic Survey in 2009.
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Emperor Penguins survive Antarctica’s freezing winters (where temperatures can dip below 45 degrees C) by huddling together in tightly packed clusters....[More]
Alain Hubert led the first group of humans to visit the colony in December 2012.
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Princess Elisabeth Antarctica’s Soete is part of an international team of scientists and researchers that spend four months of the year at the polar research station in order to study the movement of Antarctic ice caps and glaciers....[More]
A dead penguin chick lies in the snow. Although emperor penguins are not an endangered species (there are an estimated 600,000 in Antarctica), global warming could shrink their icy habitat.
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4 Comments
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not familiar with the geography of Antarctica. In one of the slides titled 'Seaside View', the East Antartica Coast was mentioned. Where exactly is the East Antartica Coast? Is it arbitrarily named? my understanding is that there shouldn't be a true east coast if the land mass encloses the South Pole.
“Humans Make First Contact with Emperor Penguin Colony” I believe that, perhaps, the first time was during the 1910–1913 British Antarctic Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. As the bird nests during the Antarctic winter, it was necessary to mount a special expedition in July 1911 from the expedition's base at Cape Evans to the penguins' rookery at Cape Crozier. It was Dr Edward Wilson, the expedition’s zoologist together with Mr. Cherry-Garrard and Mr. 'Birdie' Bowers who crossed the Ross Ice Shelf under conditions of complete darkness and temperatures of −40°C and below. It was Wilson’s personal goal in Antarctica was to recover eggs of the Emperor penguin for scientific study. Cherry-Garrard later described the ordeal in his book The Worst Journey in the World.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi Meansamom- East Antarctica is all that which lies on the Indian Ocean side of the Transantarctic Mountains. There's a good map which illustrates this here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Antarctica
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey're such most charming people.
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