Seems like it's been awfully cold in the Northeast this winter.
To keep in the spirit of that, let's look at this video filmed in the
Neumayer Channel
in Antarctica.
The orcas are toying with a
Gentoo penguin.
The Gentoo (which happens to be the fastest of all penguin species) goes
through all sorts of gyrations to escape, and then finally gets a
really good idea!
Continuing our Gentoo penguin theme, check out this footage from
Cuverville Island
in Antarctica. This was filmed by tourists in mid-November 2008 who
happened to arrive at the Gentoo rookery site only to find it nearly deserted. As you'll see, they didn't leave disappointed. The
penguins arrived suddenly and en masse.
Hoping to learn more about this, I looked in some books on penguins,
and did some googling. Yet I found no mention of gentoos exhibiting
such mass behavior.
So I asked Dr. David Ainley of
PenguinScience.com,
who in turn referred me to Dr. Bill Fraser, president of the Polar
Oceans Research Group. Dr. Fraser's field team studies Gentoos as
well as the other members of their Pygoscelid genus, Adelie and Chinstrap penguins, at nearby
Anvers Island.
Both found the footage remarkable and highly unusual. Dr. Fraser
says that this year was a strange one for all 3 Pysgoscelid penguins.
He says his field team
recorded a nearly 100% increase in breeding
Gentoos at our research site, which is not too far from
where the video was taken. Particularly relevant, though, is
that peak nesting for Gentoo penguins occurred about 1 month
earlier (mid-November) than usual (early December), and although
my field team did not witness the arrival of the birds, they
made the comment that they were all "just suddenly there". So I
am going to speculate that the video may in fact be showing
the similar arrival of Gentoos on Cuverville to begin breeding given the
date and location.
Another hypothesis, offered by Dr. Ainley, is that
perhaps this colony was finding feeding conditions to be
difficult but then some conglomeration of foraging critters (whales,
seals, flighted birds, etc) in waters just offshore got their
attention and they all split for the ocean.
This might account for their mass return, although if this were the
case it have to be at the very beginning of the breeding season since
otherwise the rookery would not have been deserted.
Both of these men have studied penguins for decades, so I guess it
just goes to show you how much still remains unknowable about our world.
