The Emperors at Auster... (part 1 of 4)
Sunday 21st Nov 99

The principal rule at Mawson is to never knock back a jolly ... so last Sunday when a party of expeditioners headed off to the famous Emperor penguin Rookery at Auster, I put my hand up. The Auster rookery is located about 20km offshore from the main Antarctic continent and thus can only be visited while it is possible to travel on the sea ice. In mid December the sea ice will melt and become to thin to drive on and eventually walk on, so the rush was on to visit Auster before summer.

We were a party of 7 - four riding in a Hagg (short for Hagglunds - a Swedish army vehicle with rubber caterpillar tracks that can float in water) and 3 riding on Quads (four wheel drive motorcycles). See above for a view from the Hagg of the Quads as we headed to Auster. Riding in a Hagg is a very noisy and bumpy experience. Earplugs are almost mandatory for trips longer than 30 minutes, and you need to take plenty of fuel. The Hagg uses about 0.7l per 1km of ATK (Aviation Turbine Kerosene). The trip takes roughly 1.5 - 2 hours each way in the Hagg because it only travels less than 40kph, and snow can slow things down quite a bit.

The weather was fantastic - clear blue skies, with only a little cloud, and only a moderate wind. We headed out at 9am, and were soon zooming across the sea ice towards the Macey Island Hut on the way to Auster.

On the way, we visited a location that was known for Weddell seals. Beside the base of an iceberg, the sea ice had cracked enough for the seals to get up onto the snow and ice to give birth to their pups. Seals congregate around these holes in the ice and work hard to keep the holes in the ice open by rubbing their teeth around the edge of the hole. This behaviour, while keeping the holes open, wears down their teeth, and is often a cause of death because a seal has lost all of it's teeth and cannot chew food. To the right seals by a grounded Iceberg. Note the thin ice around the base of the berg.

A Weddell seal Pup Listening to Weddell seals is an amazing experience. They are extremely talkative and their cries resonated along the face of the Iceberg. Over the coming winter we will have a biologist studying Weddell seal dialects - ie the different languages and calls used by the seals. For me this study will be extremely interesting as I will hopefully be able to hear a lot of different calls. I will certainly be digitising some of these calls and I will email them back for all of you to hear.

Next stop Macey Island. The concept of an "Island" in what seemed to be a white desert intrigued me. I am constantly reminding myself of the unique location and position that I am in. Normally when you travel, you have to worry about such things as - Visa's, passports, permission to travel somewhere, law enforcement etc. Yet here, we are in no country, there are no borders, roads, fences, or sovereignties ... just us. The rules that govern our trip were those of nature, and nature was the judge, jury and executioner. You begin to build up a huge respect and feel extremely small in such an overwhelmingly vast and beautiful place.

Email continues in part 2