Penguins of the Antarctic Natural World

Antarctica, the continent of the penguins.

Busy little Adelis.

Stately Emperors.

And their close relatives, the King penguins.

Summer is already giving way to the long winter night.

The first storms of autumn are a warning.

Penguins head for the warmer north.

The Emperors alone stay put.

In 90mph winds, and temperatures of 50 below, they lay their eggs.

How do these birds cope with such extreme weather?

And as the climate starts to change, what lies ahead for the penguins of the Antarctic?

Ice, thousands and thousands of miles of ice.

On both the sea...

and the land.

Antarctica's mainland is larger than Europe.

But it lies under an ice cap two miles thick.

In late autumn, there is no life here at all.

Except at a few places where the frozen land meet the frozen sea.

This dot on the north-west coast is one of them,

an Emperor penguin colony.

The world's most gruelling winter is on its way, so how have the Emperors prepared for it?

By starting new families.

They've courted, mated and their eggs are laid, one per pair.

The mothers won't brood it though, the father will.

And one of the most precarious parts of the whole process is the handover.

Too many seconds on the ice, and the egg will freeze.

So it's quickly on to the father's feet, and snuggled under a fold of skin.

The mothers need to go to sea.

Producing such a big egg has taken a lot out of them.

They have to eat now. And they'll be back in the spring.

After a short hike, they reach a break in the ice, take a gulp of air,

and enter the element where they are most at home.

As for the fathers, they get a lingering sunset.

It is the last sunshine they'll see for more than two months.

And the end of the last iota of warmth.

Now they have darkness, savage winds, nothing to eat,

and nothing to do but take their turn at the edge of the huddle

and shuffle along on their heels as they keep their eggs off the ice.

There is no sun, but they may get some comfort

from the moon and the stars and the dancing southern lights.

There is an inner comfort too,

the instinctive confidence that the sun will return,

and with it, their mates.

Further north, other penguins have other concerns.

If there are no islands around, they try to board icebergs.

These are Chinstrap penguins.

They, and the other small penguins,

won't return to Antarctica until spring, their time to breed.

Icy footholds are irrelevant, of course, to birds that fly.

Storm petrels and fairy prions can simply rest

on the unremitting southern winds.

A wandering albatross rides the gale.

There are a few battered islands, including South Georgia.

The second largest penguins, the Kings, breed here.

The chicks have already hatched.

They huddle together, waiting for their parents to bring them food.

They're kept warm by thick downy coats, so unlike their eventual adult feathers,

that the first explorers here thought they were a new species, the woolly penguin.

Sometimes, the King penguin parent will turn up with food.

But these chicks, the albatross chicks, generally do without.

This young albatross, high up on a cliff,

has been alone and unfed for three months now,

while its parents travel the southern seas.

Many miles south, and many degrees colder,

the Emperor fathers are still in darkness.

Then, as the southern hemisphere starts to tilt back towards the sun,

there is a hint of a new year in Antarctica.

The sun seems also shy in its reappearance.

It won't come clear at the horizon, but skims along it for a few hours,

bringing very little light and no warmth.

The temperature is still 30 below.

It is still deep winter.

As if the sun has sent a signal, it is now that the eggs hatch.

There is now a bird, a hungry one.

Only the mother can do anything about that.

TWEETING

If the mother doesn't bring food in a few days,

the father, who is himself starving, will have to head for the sea

and leave the chick to die.

From somewhere out there, the mothers are coming.

When they left for the sea, it was only a short walk away.

Since then, the winter has extended the sea ice,

and the trek back can be as far as 40 miles.

Leopard seals and killer whales were waiting for them,

but the injured keep going with the same determination as everyone else.

Each mother calls for her mate.

The pair celebrate their survival, their reunion and their chick.

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 caught a mile underwater, and carried 40 miles over ice.

Now the fathers will finally go, and get to eat too.

Not 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 is 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 chick 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 is at its greatest extent.

Sometimes, 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 starve.

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.

Wwhile the top of the ice is bleak and barren, just a few feet down

there is a busy living world.

Shrimp-like krill, a staple food in the Antarctic, come here for the winter growth,

relatively safe from penguins and seagulls, 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 on the ice is affected my climate change,

something many scientists have come here specifically to study.

One thing they have also established, is that the winter storms around Antarctica are getting more severe.

The sea is becoming more treacherous for penguins, such as the Chinstrap.

On South Georgia, these King penguin chicks are on the verge of starving.

Very occasionally, parents turn up with food, but mostly the chicks have been living off their fat.

As spring gets closer, the wandering albatrosses begin to make regular visits to their nest.

They can range over 700 miles a day,

gathering food for their chick, now the size of a swan.

When spring does come, it comes to these outer islands first.

After a season at sea, the King penguins return.

Millions of animals will come ashore on these outlying Antarctic islands.

King penguins, relatives of Emperors, prefer warmer climates.

Does climate change mean that some day, the Kings will oust the Emperors?

Among the arrivals are the three-ton bull elephant seals.

They've come to fight.

Winners will have as many as 50 mates.

Losers won't have any at all.

Waves of penguins arrive.

Chinstraps.

Macaronis.

Gentu penguins.

And they all head for high ground.

The flamboyant Macaronis are the noisiest and the most numerous.

They're here for the same reason as all the others - to produce chicks.

80,000 King penguin chicks have been surviving on their fat.

Their parents had been fishing in a warmer waters.

Sometimes as far north as Australia and South Africa.

Now they are back on South Georgia to carry on with the chicks' year-long upbringing.

In fact, raising a King penguin chick takes longer than a year,

which means that while some of the adults are still being parents, some non-breeders are moulting.

And some are courting, performing the penguin pasa doble.

It's easy to tell which ones are still being parents.

Not only are they not moulting or dancing, they are doing a lot of fishing.

Looking for lantern fish and squid miles to the north

where the Pacific, Atlantic and the Southern Oceans merge.

In the opposite direction, at the coast of Antarctica,

the sea is slowly warming, and the sea ice is breaking up at its edges.

There is a lot of ice left, though.

Near the coast, the sea is as solid as ever,

the sun is low and the midday temperature is 10 below.

At the Emperor colony, spring has made life easier.

The edge of the ice is nearer than it used to be, and getting food for the chicks is that much quicker.

On the other hand, the chicks are growing fast and are a lot more demanding.

The parents are in a constant relay race, to keep young stomachs filled.

As the sea ice melts a little more each day, so each day the trip is shorter.

The Antarctic is a strange upside-down at sort of place,

with nothing much on the surface...

and an abundance below it.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that penguins are birds, but they are.

And they are flying birds too.

It's just that they live on top of their sky.

They hunt fish and squid like swallows catching insects.

No other birds fly faster under water.

Emperor penguins can hold their breath for 20 minutes.

They can dive beyond the reach of sunlight a mile down.

They hunt in an ocean that, at this time of year, gets an explosion of new food.

It happens here under the crumbling ice of the nursery for fish and krill.

Their refuge is melting and they aren't safe any more from the penguins, seals and whales.

The ice is also releasing a boost of minerals, in particular, iron.

The sun, shining through the ice, sparks a growth of green algae which feed the krill.

Their ice home disappears.

Suddenly, krill have to take their important place in the wider world

and, seeking safety in numbers, they gather in colossal swarms.

The sheer mass of the Antarctic krill is greater than the mass

of the total weight of any other animal on earth.

Mammals and birds come from all over the world to transfer some of that weight to themselves.

Including animals that are already among the largest.

It's krill in fact that makes the biggest whales even possible.

Chinstrap penguins eat almost nothing but krill.

And there are about 15 million of them.

One way of assessing the health of the krill is to keep an open eye on the Chinstraps.

Chinstraps could also be indicators of climate change.

Seas get warmer, and krill are concentrated further south, so Chinstraps go further south to breed.

They've colonised this place, Zavodovski Island,

just off the Antarctic coast.

It's perfect for them, covered in bare rock, exactly what Chinstraps need for breeding.

Of course, being close to Antarctica, it should be covered in snow and ice,

but it isn't, because Zavodovski is a hot active volcano.

So, the penguins have their own centrally-heated island

with easy access to krill.

Two million breed here.

It's the largest Chinstrap colony in the world.

The penguins that breed the furthest south,

actually on the Antarctic continent, are the Adelis.

And between them and their colony, are miles and miles of spring sea ice.

Which means weeks of walking.

The trip is longer than many the Emperors have to make, perhaps 60 miles.

Nevertheless, in white bib and black tails, they set off.

At least Adelis don't have to walk to their colony in winter.

This is spring.

Eventually they reach it.

A patch of bare rock and pebbles on an Antarctic hillside.

It's windswept too, but that's to the good.

The sweeping wind, hurricane force sometimes, keeps the rocks free of snow.

The summer this far south is short.

Most families will be ready to leave in three months.

Most of them.

The breeding ground is also a graveyard for last year's chicks that didn't make it.

Adelis live just inside the margins of possibility.

Any unseasonably bad weather, and a whole generation can be lost.

Breeding works this way.

Males get there first, pick out nesting spots and court the females as they arive.

A wave of the flippers, and a gutteral gossip is all they have time for.

Most find their old partners and re-pebble their nests.

The females lay two eggs.

For at least the first fortnight the males incubate,

then they take turns.

The chicks hatch after a month and are fed for another two months in constant rush-hour relays.

As the summer progresses, and days get longer, the Ice Age comes closer to the shore,

which is convenient because the chicks are hungrier than ever.

The 12ft Leopard seals are hungry too.

The Adelis have to find ways of dodging them or sneaking by.

By the time the days are 24 hours long, so are the fishing expeditions.

The sun just goes around and around.

There is little time for sleep.

Melting icebergs roll through the water like drunken hillsides.

Everything rushes to make the most of summer.

Macaronis do rock-hopping.

They charge back and forth for food.

The Emperor penguins are on the 24-hour commute too.

It's been six months since this chick's midwinter hatching

and now it's demanding its bodyweight in food every week.

For parents, there are simply no moments of peace.

As soon as the chicks are fed, it's time to go hunting again for more.

Sometimes Emperors fish as far north as South American and New Zealand waters,

but usually they don't go beyond Antarctica's scattered islands.

It's an area that is also the krill fishery of the Chinstraps.

They nest high in this island's hills.

And between the sea and the nests is a penguin superhighway, going up and coming down.

The first seals which breed on the beach keep an eye on the traffic.

From shore to nest is an hour's walk not counting setbacks.

This one involves a torrent from a melting glacier.

Never mind, Chinstrap penguins are seabirds after all,

and very tough ones too.

First they're deep sea divers, then they are mountaineers.

This isn't a stroll up a hillside either, it is real climbing.

And with the use of only two feet and a stiff supporting tail.

It's volcanic ash up here,

exposed because the strong winds have blown all the snow away.

The parent who has just arrived will feed the chick,

the other, who hasn't eaten for a couple of days will go down and fill up with krill.

One reason the nests are in such a precarious place is to avoid predators.

Something that is harder to do once they reach the water.

A Leopard seal can eat penguins at the rate of six an hour.

In a whole summer it can down thousands.

It is possible, if very rare, for a penguin to be caught and get away.

Despite the torments of skuas, it soldiers on.

A Leopard seal, like any other predator, captures the animals

that are easiest to catch, and this penguin was probably already in poor condition before it was attacked.

In fact, the animals on the islands around the Antarctic peninsula are, to some extent, struggling.

By 2005, most of the fish were gone, scooped up by the huge Antarctic fishing fleet.

And shrinking sea ice has reduced krill by 80%

This penguin has been particularly unlucky.

But what's in the future for all the penguins?

Climate change, as elsewhere in the world, is having mixed effects.

The Antarctic peninsula,

which stretches out towards South America, has warmed dramatically.

The assumption was that the same was happening on the mainland,

and that aerial and satellite surveys would confirm that.

Not so.

The surveys have shown that more snow than usual is falling on Antarctica,

and that the ice cap is actually thickening.

Around the peninsula, though, temperatures have risen five times faster than the world average.

The ice is breaking up.

Ice shelves the size of small countries have floated away.

Antarctica is building up in the middle, and crumbling at the edges.

It appears that the continent with virtually no pollution or people,

is the one affected by changes in the atmosphere the most.

Scientists still need to know precisely what the effects are.

To help, they've looked more intently at what may already be the best studied sea bird in the world,

the Adeli penguin.

Adelis live in a world of ice.

They feed under pack ice and rest on ice floes.

Nowadays, though, the ice is unreliable.

Adelis famously can put up with hardship.

But these problems are new.

Where there used to be ice, now there is open water.

And the air is the warmest it has been since the last ice age.

Chicks wait for their parents on what used to be frozen ground.

But it is now as muddy as a pigsty.

This colony used to be the most southerly outpost. It's not any more.

Other Adelis are setting up colonies even further south.

By following the Adelis' redistribution, scientists can trace the effects of the changing pack ice.

The Adelis keep having new experiences.

Invaders, for instance.

Chinstrap penguins which avoid pack ice, do better in places where the Adelis are suddenly uncomfortable.

Fur and Elephant seals are turning up too.

The Adelis can't move. Not this year, anyway.

Not before their chicks are grown.

So they're stuck in the mud.

As the long twilights turn into actual sunsets and short nights,

the parents have to go further away for pack ice and food.

When a parent comes back, its chicks recognise its call and are led away

on a long steeplechase over the rocks, to a place where they can be fed in peace.

Adelis usually have two chicks each and the most aggressive one is always fed first.

As the pack ice shrinks, food is scarce now.

Skuas are particularly alert to weak chicks that have not been fed.

Sometimes, strong chicks are attacked as well.

A frightened penguin often regurgitates its krill, and the skuas gratefully eat that too.

The tension between skuas and penguins increases as summer nears its end.

Both know it's important to fatten up before they leave for the winter.

Until a few years ago, this was solid ice.

Now, it's just broken ice floes and the water is warmer and salty.

The Emperor penguin colony is nearer than it's ever been to the open sea.

The chicks this year are very healthy.

They are seven months old and already as big as adult Adelis.

Being right next to the sea means their parents have quick access to fish and squid,

and can feed them more frequently. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the ice is still melting badly

and the chicks don't have their swimming feathers yet.

It's possible that the whole colony will disappear into the sea.

There's trouble at Emperor colonies on several parts of the Antarctic coast.

Many are getting smaller, some where they can, are moving further south.

It's not known if a lot of chicks have been drowning, but that's possible too.

On South Georgia, though, 1,000 miles to the north, the King penguins are flourishing.

They breed on land and are used to warmer waters, so climate change has made little difference to them.

100 years ago, they almost went extinct, hunted for skins and meat.

But now, as other penguins decline, they could march south into new territories.

Kings are definitely on the up.

A new generation goes to sea.

In changing times, there are also winners.

The albatross chick is a year old and still growing, but is old enough

to start learning to do what albatrosses are famous for.

It spent its first winter on the nest.

It will spend its second on the wing

as a new generation is starting again.

For albatrosses, the end of summer is the beginning of the year.

The new chick will be fed throughout autumn,

and will then be abandoned to spend winter alone.

This time next year,

it too will finally graduate to almost perpetual flight.

Early in autumn, the sea ice is at its minimum.

With each year warmer than the last, this is the minimum of the minimum.

The Emperor penguins' colony is gone.

Only some swimming birds are left.

There is no way of knowing how many of the chicks born nine months ago in midwinter actually survived.

There's more to this story though than just warmer seas and melting ice.

Because the effects of global warming are so evident in the Antarctic, the handful of scientists

who were working here 30 years ago have been joined by thousands of others.

What they are finding is a lot less predictable than a gentle warming up.

For a start, the increase in snow over the continental ice cap is making it colder.

Air, at a temperature of 50 below, spins out of the centre in huge cyclones.

Storm-force winds and waves then batter the fresh sea ice.

As well as the animals that depend on it.

The sea can be cold enough to freeze, but the autumn storms won't let it.

In the Adeli colony on the edge of the continent, blizzards leave the parents

hunkered down or stranded offshore.

But penguins are hardy animals. The real killer is what can happen next.

The winds can drop, the water calms, and the supercold continental air quickly freezes the sea.

The adults might make it across, but few of the chicks would survive the trek.

Unpredictable storms break up and refreeze the sea many times each autumn.

Adeli chicks are growing waterproof feathers as fast as they can.

As soon as they can, they follow their parents to the shore.

The sea is full of heavy jagged chunks of ice, and the youngsters are naturally wary of taking the risk.

But what's their choice?

Stay here and starve?

They can't get very far into the water though, and end up skittering across the broken ice.

All the clumsy thrashing and hopping brings up another danger.

A Leopard seal.

It won't get every chick it tries for, but it knows a good hunting spot when it sees one.

Finally, the fledglings take their first flight.

Any youngsters that didn't take the plunge are quickly isolated and abandoned.

As the south polar cyclones get even colder, they'll freeze.

As autumn advances, so does the sea ice at an average of a few miles a day.

And penguins are driven north, ahead of its edge.

Chinstraps, Adelis and most of the other penguins will spend the winter at sea fishing.

They cling to icebergs

and generally wait for spring.

Only one kind is heading south.

The Emperors.

Some Emperors are pioneering new colonies.

They may be young, breeding for the first time, but they may have lost their home to the sea.

They are heading further south so the ice won't melt under them.

It will be colder here in winter too.

At the same time, under their feet, the fresh sea ice is the roof of an Antarctic nursery.

In almost total darkness, and safe from penguins, krill are growing again.

The vital nurseries are changing with the climate.

And a few feet above them, scientists are trying to work out what's changing, and where.

Climatologists see an Antarctic in turmoil.

Biologists say many animals will lose, but some will gain.

Politicians are "talking about it".

Some accept the science, others say it's unproven.

In fact, nobody really knows where we are heading.

As for the penguins, well, they're tough animals.

They've coped with Antarctica up till now.

Perhaps they can adapt to its future.

Mid-winter, and each Emperor father has his egg.

Each one is hungry, cold and in the dark.

In the most extreme place on Earth, the penguins of the Antarctic soldier on.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd, 2006

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