Images of

ANTARCTICA

Animals

Photos © 2002 Seth White

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This is the Antarctic Cod (species name Mawsoni, after the legendary Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson). A group here is studying the antifreeze proteins in this and other sea creatures. This group is led by Art DeVries, who has been coming down to the ice since the early 60's. The water here is about 2 degrees C below freezing, due to the salinity. So the sea dwellers here have developed antifreeze agents (or "ice active substances" in the proper lingo) to allow them to survive without their internal water freezing. This particular cod lived in the aquarium for a while. Menacing looking fish, indeed. Especially since the ones this year were being starved as part of the experiment to precisely determine the origin of their antifreeze proteins (or at least I think this was the idea). Anyway, I did not try to put my hand in this tank to pet the fishy. A couple of these critters were actually filleted up and served at a Hut 10 party I went to a while back, for the Crary Lab. Very tender and tasty fish. They made some sushi out of it too, which was quite the delicacy from what I hear. Hope the Japanese don't find out about this...

These things are bizarre, and a little bit creepy. Giant sea spiders. Some of these were by-catch, or animals that were caught in traps intended for other fish under study. So they kept them in the aquarium tanks and let them go at the end of the season. I would not want to mess with one of these. They give me the willies.
Another pic of a sea spider, a little blurry.
This is called 'biomass'. It's one of the tanks in the Crary building Aquarium, filled mostly with by-catch from traps used to collect eelpouts.
A bunch of local fish. I'm not sure what the fat-headed ones are, but I belive the sharp-nosed one on the right is a 'Dragon Fish'. Or maybe not. Who knows. To me, a science tech who runs geophysical instruments, they are all just LITTLE FISHIES!!
This thing is a humungoid starfish, which has grown fat while gorging itself on the sea floor bounty. Even the biologists were remarking at the size of this one....so it must be big.
Some more starfish getting cuddly. Or maybe the large one is getting ready to eat the smaller one. I dunno.
More starfish. A group was here this season studying the spawning behavior of these things as well as sea urchins......
....speaking of which, here are some blurry starfish with some blurry urchins.
An orange colored sea-slug-thingy with some fish.
This brittle star really caught my eye. A neat creature. It seemed as though any handling of it could easily break off one of its spindly legs.
This thing was so cool. One day it would be fully stretched out, and the next day it would be curled up to the size of a silver dollar.
A Borch (the nickname of a fish named for an early Antarctic explorer, whose complete name I forget and am too lazy to look up). These guys were very cute, and actually seemed curious when you approached their tank. Some of them would swim up and study you as you peered over the tank edge. If you dipped your finger into the water, they would come up to nibble on it. I don't think they were that used to seeing creatures from above the open water look at them, as they spend most of their lives under the ice. According to Bev Dickson, who was part of the group studying them, they were initially very poor at nibbling your finger, and would often miss it completely when they tried. But they seemed to learn, and when I met them they got it most of the time.

5/28/04 18 months after making this webpage I am finally getting this fishie's name right. It is a Pagothenia borchgrevinki, aka "bald notothen" (thanks Barbara). It is named after the Norwegian explorer Carsten Borchgrevink, whose main claim to fame is the first wintering on the Antarctic Continent at Cape Adare (northern edge of the Ross Sea...the party's hut still stands!).
A fern-like thingy. When this thing got up the gusto to swim, it was remarkable. Its arms would flap in an alternating manner, so half of its arms would move up while the other half moved down as it floated along. Amazing.
A fuzzy 6-legged starfish.
OCTOPUS!! Several of these were caught up in the traps, so they spent a tour in the aquarium. This has to be the ultimate bizarre animal on earth. Lots of entertainment watching them creep around the tank. They would sometimes dash full speed ahead into the wall, squish up against it, and then speed of somewhere else. Their little suckers have quite the grip too (you're not supposed to touch the fishies in the aquarium, but I just couldn't resist poking the tip of a tentacle one day. I had to pry it off my finger....)
More of the OCTOPUS!!
MORE OCTOPUS!!
A skua, on a hut at Scott Base. These things are the ultimate scavengers. They fly down here during the summer to nest and breed, and they have to make do with whatever they can scrounge up. Mainly seal and penguin carcasses, but they also raid McMurdo quite a bit. They are aggressive and are not afraid of people at all. I literally drove straight toward one on the ground one day, just to see if it would move. I ended up getting so close to it that I swerved for fear of squashing it. The bird literally did not move at all. If you walk outside with a sandwich in your hand, you run the risk of being dive-bombed by one of them. An occasional prank here is to load a sandwich or an apple in the hood of someone's red parka as it's hung up near the galley. When the person puts it on and walks outside, the chances of a skua marauding them go way up. Without exaggerating, this bird would eat your face if it could. But they are highly intelligent and resourceful.
Another pic of a skua at Scott Base.
And now for something completely different....TWO skuas at Scott Base!
A Crabeater sea (or so I'm told). These are exceptionally rare near McMurdo...something like one in a few thousand is a Crabeater (not a Weddell). I saw this one lounging around at Cape Evans one day.
Actually, I don't believe this seal actually eats crabs that much.
A Weddell Seal and pup at Cape Evans. They are much larger, darker colored, and fatter than Crabeaters. From a distance, they look like giant slugs on the ice. But this mother and her pup were great to watch. The pup made all sorts of CUTE noises, some of which sounded just like a human baby. The mother responded in kind as they slinked back and forth along the ice around each other. While watching them I really got a sense of affection between them.
Another pic of the Weddell and her pup.
A movie clip of the Weddell seals moving around (.avi file).
The Weddells with the Crabeater (.avi file).
Penguins have been a rare sight at McMurdo in recent years. An iceberg the size of Rhode Island broke off from the Ross Ice Shelf and found its way to block the inlet to McMurdo Sound. Because of this iceberg, the sea ice no longer breaks up as much or as early as it used to. So the penguin colony at Cape Royds has suffered quite a bit, since they have a hard time getting there by walking over the sea ice, instead of swimming there as usual. And very few of them wander down to McMurdo at all. I asked a few people around here to tell me if they heard of penguins close by, and luckily enough, I was in my office one day when I heard from Susan Stalfort that there were some right near the sea ice transition on the Cape Armitage Loop. So I got on my bike and pedaled down there. Sure enough, there was a group of 5 Adelies lounging around. I would have been so disappointed to come all the way here without seeing actual honest-to-god penguins in the wild.
So this is an Adelie penguin. Everybody knows penguins are cute, right? That's why there are penguin stuffed animals for sale everywhere, penguin jewelry, and penguins on logos for everything under the sun. In person, they are so cute it's not funny. They will waddle around, stretch, yawn, and make a variety of noises - including what sounds like a sneeze. They will also drop down on their bellies and paddle their way along - this is called tobogganing.
This one just got up, and is stretching. I had left my camera at Arrival Heights this particular day, so I grabbed my officemate's camera on the way out the door. His camera has a whacked field of view, where what you see is not what you get. So these penguin shots ain't the greatest.
These penguins looked sort of like litte blobs with beaks and flippers, but they are actually pretty flexible and agile.
The penguin crew with lovely McMurdo in the background.
Still more of the penguins. There are a ton more penguin pictures here.... obviously I thought it was great to see them.
More.
And more.
White Island in the background here....
....and here.
Ob Hill in the background this time.
After a while, the penguins got up one by one and slowly started to waddle off. This coincided with the arrival of a group of onlookers who got a lot closer to them than our first group had.
So off they went. Problem was, they were headed south, which is directly opposite from open water. These guys must have been lost to begin with if they ended up at McMurdo this year. I don't know what happened to them. If they didn't turn around back toward the ice edge (which was a good 25 miles north at the time), then they probably didn't make it.
They got up, one by one, in a very social and nonchalant manner, and then waddled off. While they were milling around deciding to leave, and when they finally did leave, they reminded me of a group of people people trying to look cool while deciding whether or not to stay at a party.
I am not sure if I'll get to see any more penguins before I leave next year. Hope so.
A Weddell seal sleeping. The rule of thumb for wildlife is not to approach them closely enough that you alter their behavior. I saw this particular seal out near Big Razorback Island. There was a seal camp out here earlier in the season, so these seals were pretty accustomed to humans. This one opened its eyes, looked at me, and went back to sleep. So I crept up a bit closer to take some pics.
Zoomed in at the dozing seal.
At Cape Evans, I found this seal carcass. I have no idea how long it had been there.... two years or a hundred years? The skuas sure picked it clean though.
Speaking of which, here is a skua doing its thing near Big Razorback Island.
Somebody once described a skua to me as a bird that 'is as smart as a crow but flies like a hawk'. This is about right.
Another pic of the seal at Big Razorback Island.
This blob thing is actually some sort of jellyfish. It's only the second one that's ever been scientifically identified. The researchers who caught this one (accidentally) asked around to find out what the heck it was. Turns out, there was only one other specimen...at the Smithsonian. So they kept this one, I believe, and it's now specimen #2.
This thing would appear as a little ping-pong ball sized blob one day, and then then next it would expand to about 10 times that size. Very strange.
A penguin in a trash an. A great picture. This was taken while getting a penguin off one of the runways. It would be a *bad thing* if a penguin were to get squashed by an incoming plane, so when one ventures out onto a runway, you have to go get it and move it elsewhere. So, years of experience has shown that the best way to do this is to (a) run around until you can grab it, (b) pick it up in a specific way...watching the beak because it might bite you, (c) stuffing it into an open-topped trash can (which is a good size to keep them calm and too tall for them to jump out), and (d) driving it far away before releasing it. Photo by Nick Andrew, local chemist who took part in one of these escapades one day.