[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
ah
[Music]
each mother calls for her mate
[Music]
the players celebrate their survival
their reunion
and their chick
[Music]
when the greeting ceremony is over it’s
time to transfer the chick
but the father’s been through hell with
this baby and doesn’t always find it
easy to let go
eventually he does
the chick eats at last a meal of fish
and squid
quarter mile underwater and carried 40
miles over ice
now the fathers will finally go and get
to eat
too but all the mothers have come back
a chick finds itself abandoned and then
adopted not all the surviving mothers
have been able to find their mates
in fact demand is greater than supply
and females will actually fight over
orphans
in the end there’s no chance that one
female can raise a foundling by herself
and almost all abandoned chicks are
abandoned again
one parent is needed to keep the cheek
warm while the other goes for food
and for the next nine months the
successful fathers and mothers
will do this in shifts making and
remaking the long slog
over the sea ice
in the early spring it’s at its greatest
extent
sometimes though there are pit stops
thanks to weddell seals which use their
teeth to keep breathing holes open
whales make holes too the seals wear
down their teeth
and end up toothless and style
the temperature of the water under the
ice is below zero
but is kept liquid by the salt content
no unprotected human could swim under
here and survive
but for antarctic animals it’s like a
warm bath compared to conditions above
the ice
[Music]
and while the top of the ice is bleak
and barren just a few feet down
is a busy living world
shrimp like krill a staple food in the
antarctic
come here for their winter growth
relatively safe from penguins and seals
at least until the ice melts
this is a world that humans have only
recently been able to explore
and nearly every day something new is
discovered down here
in 2005 for instance scientists showed
that the abundance of krill depended
largely on the amount of winter sea ice
the extent of the ice is affected by
climate change
something many scientists have come here
specifically to study
one thing they also established is that
the winter storms around antarctica are
getting more severe
the sea is becoming more treacherous for
penguins such as the chin strap
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