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Winter
Wildlife
(part 1 of 4)
Thursday February 8th 2001
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Throughout
the long winter months it seemed as though there were only
three species of animal that existed, with one of them being
my human wintering colleagues and the other two the Weddell
seals and Emperor penguins. These seals and penguins were
almost always present where ever we travelled over the sea
ice so much so that spotting a lonely Emperor plodding along
in the distance, or coming across a seal breathing hole only
sometimes warranted a second look.
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Absorbing
the mid winter view from the top of Welch Island. |
Travelling
up onto the plateau behind the station was like venturing into a
deserted wasteland with no animal life and offering only brief and
small hints of plant life in the form of coloured lichens on the
rocks. The constant soft pastel skies and the pitch black night
skies had lulled me into forgetting the diversity, changes and activity
of summer. On one calm day we travelled out over the sea ice to
the peak of Welch Island where I last visited in December 1999.
After I climbed to the top I saw the midday sun rise and begin to
run around the horizon, and as I looked over the vast expanse of
sea ice I could see no evidence of non-human life, just a vast frozen
desert.
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Travelling
on the sea ice during the winter months is challenging because
of the cold and windy conditions giving you only a minute
or so before your hands became painfully cold while operating
a camera, trying to collect seal scats, or setting up underwater
recording equipment.
Rhonda
and Patrick are post-graduate biology students wintering at
Mawson to study the Weddell seal from two different perspectives
- diet and vocalisations.
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Rhonda
collecting Weddell seal scats. |
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Rhonda
is studying the variation of seal diets by collecting and
analysing Weddell seal scats (poo), while Patrick is recording
the myriad of different calls of Weddell seals underwater
and trying to see if there are any regional dialects. To collect
the data meant that Rhonda and Patrick had to make a lot of
field trips out onto the sea ice, quite often for long distances
and often also back to the same location a number of times.
Venturing
out and about with Rhonda and Pat was always a lot of fun
and I always tried to help them out as much as I could. Rhonda
conducted a number of seal surveys in 3 different places -
45km to the east at Macey Island, directly north of Mawson
and 100km to the west at Colbeck Archipeligo.
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Patrick
setting up his hydrophone to record Weddell seal vocalisations.
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The
surveys involved driving a Hagglunds along a straight north south
line using the Global Positioning System (GPS), while having two
quads riding in a zigzag pattern on each side of the Hagg looking
for evidence of Weddell seal activity. In August on our first survey
at Macey, Patrick and I rode the quads over some very heavy sastrugi
for about 60km. That night and for the next week I had a very sore
back because of the almost constant bumping and bouncing over the
rough surface. Riding quads over heavy sastrugi is very tiring on
both the body and the mind because you have to stand up / sit down
/ lean or shift your weight around constantly while staying alert
and watching for sudden drops in the sastrugi. It becomes even harder
when the visibility drops and everything turns to white in a "white
out" or when your helmet visor fogs up from your warm moisture
laden breath.
Email
continues in part 2
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