MIDWINTER FLIGHT OVER ANTARCTICA REVEALS EMPEROR PENGUINS

National Science Foundation
Media Tipsheet
August 26, 1994
Lynn Simarski

During this June's full moon, which marked midwinter in the Southern Hemisphere, penguin ecologist Gerald Kooyman got what may have been the first-ever aerial glimpse of Antarctica's emperor penguins during the winter.

Kooyman, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, flew aboard one of the U.S. Air Force planes that make an annual, nonstop, 13-hour flight from New Zealand to drop supplies for personnel wintering over at U.S. research stations run by the National Science Foundation.

Using a night-vision "intensifier" owned by the U.S. Army, Kooyman was able to see thousands of emperors 10,000 feet below in their winter-survival huddle at Cape Roget, one of six emperor colonies along the western coast of the Ross Sea. He was surprised to observe the birds exposed to the elements, instead of positioned near sheltering cliffs.

He was also able to observe sea ice conditions, a key variable for the emperors' survival, since they incubate and raise their chicks on this ice. Kooyman believes that emperors, the largest and most majestic of penguin species, can be used as an indicator of environmental change, if their population fluctuations and ecology can be better understood. "These penguins inhabit one of the richest marine environments surrounding Antarctica, and they appear to be sensitive even to small changes in the marine environment," Kooyman said. He is enthusiastic about using future midwinter flights to further explore the emperors' winter lives.