For the past week or two, we have been SCUBA diving at two new sites called Cinder Cones and Turtle Rock. Access to both sites involves a 1-to-1.5-hour drive in the Pistin Bully on the sea ice towards Erebus Bay.

This drive is arguably the most beautiful commute on the planet.

This journey, whilst beautiful, is not always the most comfortable! The sea ice is covered in cracks, rafted ice, and pressure ridges, all of which are quite bumpy to cross. Unfortunately, only the driver’s seat has any suspension… luckily, we all take turns driving!

Last Friday, on our journey home after a day of diving under the ice, we received an unexpected call on the radio from Central Comms at McMurdo Station:

“Pistin Bully 318. This is Central Comms on Channel 3. Over.”

“Central Comms. This is Pistin Bully 318. Go ahead.”

“Pistin Bully 318. We wanted to let you know that there are penguins on the sea ice about a mile ahead of you on the road”

“Thank you central comms!”

This is the first penguin sighting this year at McMurdo and everyone was very excited – including those working at Central Comms!

As we continued our drive, I asked Rob, who I was driving with that day whether he thought they would be Adelie or Emperor penguins – and he reckoned Emperors that had wandered over from Cape Crozier.

Cape Crozier is the most easterly point of Ross Island, as shown in the map below (FYI McMurdo Towan where we are currently located next to Hut Point on the peninsula at the bottom left of the map). Cape Crozier is home to one of the two southernmost emperor penguin colonies in the world (>1900 breeding pairs as of 2018), one of the largest Adelie penguin colonies in the world (~270,000 breeding pairs as of 2012), and one of the largest south polar skua colonies in the world (~1,000 breeding pairs) [according to Wikipedia!].

As we approached, I quickly grabbed my camera and set it up with my 200 mm zoom lens. I was very excited to get to see wild penguins! As we drew closer to town, we were scanning the horizon frantically. It turned out that they were impossible to miss! Up ahead, at the side of the flagged sea ice route were two little black-and-white mounds.

As part of the Antarctic treaty, all wildlife in Antarctica is protected and it is against the law to engage in harmful interference in Antarctica of native mammals, native birds, native plants or native invertebrates. So we kept our distance and parked the Pistin Bully about 100 m away. In my frantic attempt to take photos, I jumped out of the vehicle without grabbing my Big Red jacket or gloves – both of which were really necessary today as the wind had picked up. However, at that time, I couldn’t feel the cold – I was too excited! I ran away from the Pistin Bully and away from the others to get a shot of the penguins with McMurdo Town in the background:

However, as soon as I knelt on the ground, the penguins looked in my direction, and started to walk directly toward me!

They continued to beeline my way!

The way they walked was adorable. The slow and steady waddle! The closer and closer they got, the more zoomed-in my photos were becoming. Suddenly wishing I had opted for a different camera lens! Eventually, it reached the point where I could barely fit their heads in the frame! I had no idea they were going to be this curious!

When they were about 6 ft away from me, they halted their march and surveyed me thoroughly. Watchful eyes, wing flaps, and head bobs. They were unbelievably beautiful. The yellow colors on their neck and the pink on their beaks were gorgeous. Their feathers were so intricate and shiny. Not to mention, they were adorably fat and super cute!

I was on cloud nine. Finally, I just put the camera down and enjoyed the moment.

Here I was, at the bottom of the world having this incredible interaction with some of the locals. As one of the scientists who are working on the sea ice, we were incredibly fortunate to have this experience – the majority of McMurdo Citizens are not able to get this close to wildlife – and so I realize what a privilege this was. However, some folks were able to watch us from the station with their binoculars!

Eventually, I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore and my face was getting very cold from the wind. So I headed back to the Pistin Bully, backing away slowly so as not to startle them. However, they were not phased. In fact not long after I left, they started their little waddle and came right on up to the Pistin Bully to have a look.

We spent about 30 minutes watching the penguins. They were very serene and a pleasure to observe.

This was definitely one of the highlights of my trip. Thank you to my new feathery friends.

Having made it to our new site, (named Turtle Rocks) we popped in to get a good look at what was around. It was a bit of a brisk dive as we spent the day making a hole and then the heater wouldn’t start so we were diving in a hut but it was not warm.

One aspect of diving is buoyancy where we have to balance our breathing and the air in our suit to float. You have seen lots of videos of Rowan and Lila having superb buoyancy where it seems like they just hover in air, but that is some mad skill and not easy. A good example of this is Rowan (in the video above) hovering soooo close to the bottom that she doesn’t even see that a wee sea star grabs on for a short ride. I’m sure that sea star had many a good tale about the land monster that grabbed them later on.

We spend a lot of time looking up and watching the sea ice change throughout the season. It is still growing but as we look in the cracks things are changing. More and more there are schools of thousands of little (juvinile) fish hanging out in there. They are like little specs in the image above but if you look closely there are an amazing amount of them.

The diversity and plethora of life under the ice is amazing, if one is only able to look at it.

On today’s dive at the Jetty, I played around with silhouette photography. The ice hole and the sea ice cracks offer such bright light in contrast to the dark surrounding depths. Such a dynamic light environment down there! Photo credits: Rowan McLachlan

Some days are glorious and sunny down here. It may be a solid -10 (either F or C) but it can be really lovely. Today was not that day. We drove back in driving snow with limited visibility. There were still tons of levels of safety (GPS, Field survival bags, two vehicles, and a Sat Phone not to mention a station that knew exactly where we were coming and going that has a Search and Rescue Team on standby at all times) keeping us safe but it was… as we like to say “blowey” because it was blowing >40 knots. I would show you what today looked like but just picture a white screen or piece of blank paper. It looked like that.

So instead here is a video with our 360 Cam showing how surreal diving in Antarctica is. You can see me swim by a Sea Angel at one point (a Pteropod – a voracious, as well as beutiful predator of plankton).

The view of the Royal Society Range is as dynamic as anything. It is really hard not to spend the day just staring out the window. But with wind and snow and soo many colors, there is always a minute here or there to see what is going on outside. Sometimes it looks like this:

Cinder cones is a great place to be back to. Its been 5 years since I was last here and this is the focal place for our research. The sea ice has remained a challange in different ways but we were able to get a route here but unfortunately not a nice large heated hut. Instead, we have the Dive Tomato that is imaged in Lila’s post. Unlike our huts, these are only heated when we get here and today, the heater misbehaved so it was brisk.

This also means that we don’t get a nice circular hole and instead we are diving through a nice wide crack. Plus we have to chop up the ice each day before we go in, improving the crack into a nice dive site.

If you look closely you can see Dr. Rowan through the ice chunks heading off to science.

But the cold is worth it for the view on the way down. Here is Lila getting her sampling gear off of the downline before we head off to sample our new site.