Wildlife really wild on coast

There is very little that the camp manager, Mack, doesn’t know about Marble Point. He has presided over the Marble Point Air Facility for seven years. Before he came here, Mack spent many years at South Pole Station and a few at McMurdo Station, including several winters; all in all, Mack has spent about 18 years in Antarctica. He is a mechanic, a helicopter technician, a fuelie and a utilities technician. Here at Marble Point, he remembers four or five cooks, a score of pilots, and is as familiar with our generators and infrastructure as most people are with their own hands.

So when I came back from my walk looking harried and exasperated, he just laughed at me. “Skua birds get to you?” he asked.

“Divebombed me the whole time,” I replied.

Skua are one of the only varieties of wildlife we have here, but they are impossible to ignore. Often compared to fat sea gulls, they are large, heavily built, robust birds. Scavengers and predators of chicks, eggs, krill and copepods, they have been nicknamed “the raptor of the south.” The South Polar Skua is the world’s most southerly bird – once or twice it has even been seen at the South Pole itself, blown off course or in the company of a traverse. Fiercely predatory, they will defend their territories against all intruders. Even though their breeding season has finished, I guess I still count as one such trespasser on their turf – which seems to encompass all of Marble Point. I often find myself dodging the sudden whoosh of their 4-foot wingspan on my daily walks.

I have to laugh at my own chagrin – back at Amundsen-Scott, I would have given up my day off just to see a skua, or anything alive. Once a ladybug made it to the South Pole, hidden on a rare shipment of lettuce. We were so excited when we found it in Cargo Jane’s salad (as if salad wasn’t enough to get excited about!) that we made a little house for it in an empty butter container with holes in the lid. We kept it as a pet for a week.

Now that I’m on the coast, I’m around wildlife for the first time in months. The skua may divebomb me, but I’ve learned to ignore the flybys, and it’s nice to see creatures in the skies and hear them call to one another.

My other common walk companions are the Weddell seals. They curl up on the pack ice in the cove during the day, climbing out of the water and onto the ice floes in large groups. They can sleep there for hours, all but immobile, whole families shifting periodically to yawn or wave a tail. Despite their placid appearance above water, they are fast swimmers and move with disarming speed in the water. They can dive up to 2,000 feet by collapsing their lungs and lowering their breathing rates, and can stay underwater for up to an hour. Given the size of their teeth, which they use to chew breathing holes in the ice, and their blubber-padded bulk (Weddell seals can weigh up to 1,000 pounds), I am careful not to get too close, despite their amiability. Instead I sit quietly on the rocks nearby, watching their whiskered faces and listening to them snore.

The seals like to nap on the ice shelves for one very good reason: It keeps them clear of the orcas. Orcas, or killer whales, are excellent, acrobatic swimmers. Orcas are harder to sight, but I’ve been lucky. The helicopter pilots are kind to the woman who keeps them supplied with stew and cookies; they gave me a scenic ride on my trip back to McMurdo for snowcraft school. When we saw orcas leaping out of the sea behind us the pilot banked sharply, diving to skim the water near the jumping mammals. The orcas continued leaping in and out of the ocean along the edge of the sea ice where we could watch them, their fins flashing in the sunlight.

One more reason keeping that extra cookie dough on hand pays off.

“Once,” Mack tells me, “we saw a leopard seal on our trip back to McMurdo. We flew over it, and it snapped its jaws at the helicopter.” He laughs at the look on my face – leopard seals are the most ferocious seals in the Antarctic, the only seal to prey on other seal species.

There’s some wildlife I wouldn’t mind not seeing. I’ve got my hands full with the skua.

Meg Adams, who grew up in Holden and graduated from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, shares her Antarctic experiences with readers each Friday. For more about her adventure, information about Antarctica and to e-mail questions to her, go to the BDN Web site: bangordailynews.com.