Hello everyone,
I'm well overdue to talk about the most popular item that most folks think of when they think of Antarctica: Penguins.
This evening's science talk was just about that very subject. Dr. Gerald Kooyman has been studying penguins here in Antarctica for over 35 years! His son, Carsten and himself have a fantastic talk on penguins. They have been studying various aspects fo the penguings, including all about how they dive to great depths to find food - some as much as 1200 feet down or more! As parents penguins often go without food for over 100 days, while they are waiting fo rthe only egg they lay each year to hatch. here the male penguin sits on the egg - instead of the female.
Penguins have few fears fo human beings - so they will walk right up to you since they have lots of curiosity. Often when the Kooymans camp on the ice near the sea ice edge, the penguins will surround their camp and start to trumpet - in fact it gets so noisy, they sleep with ear plugs in at night!
Of course, they showed video of them swimming and diving as well as doing all sorts of antics on the ice. Very enjoyable and interesting to watch.
That's the scoop from here!
Matthew