CAPE CROZIER - Febuary, 2014
My final field assignment this year was to close the camp at Cape Crozier. Cape Crozier is the most easterly point of Ross Island, a 35 minute helicopter ride around the island from McMurdo Station. It was discovered in 1841 during James Clark Ross's expedition. The edge of the Ross Ice Shelf stretches away to the east. Cape Crozier is home to one of the largest Adelie penguin colonies in the world. There are about around 500,000 penguins there. There is also a Emperor colony and one of the largest Skua colonies there as well. Cape Crozier is one of Antarctica's Specially Protected Areas.
The Work Part... Closing the hut at Cape Crozier.
My Co-worker hard at work!
Sometimes the job feels like glorified house keeping. Glorified in the sense that we are cleaning a hut on an island, by a penguin colony, in Antarctica!
The hut all tidied up.
The hut from the out side You can see the solar outhouse in front.
Packed and ready to go.
The BFC manages all the survival caches so one component of our job is to check them after each season to inventory and make sure everything is there and in order. Inside are tents, sleeping bags, stoves fuel food and various survival gear. A Skua perches on top of the cache.
The helicopter landing at the pad in front of the hut. You can see the open water in the background. The Ross Sea!
All we could see was penguins. As far as the eye could see. The sound of them was overpowering. The smell of penguin poop was also overwhelming. It stank! They were running around all over, chasing their mothers for food. Scooting down to the water and fighting the waves to get into the ocean. Shooting up and out of the water like darts in the ocean and waddling out of the water full of fish.
There were a ton of dead penguins covering the ground. It was heartbreaking.
A mom feeding her little chick! This process takes forever!
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