Few travel destinations can have such charismatic ambassadors as Antarctica and its penguins. They’re a highlight of any Antarctic cruise. But there’s one iconic species that’s always high on the wishlist and yet very few travellers ever get to see them. So, just how do you get to see emperor penguins in Antarctica?
Head south for emperors
The first thing to know is that you won’t see emperor penguins on a standard cruise to the Antarctic Peninsula. These are creatures that like it really cold, and the western side of the Peninsula where most cruise ships call is just too balmy for emperors to make a living, no matter how chilly it might feel to visitors.
The reason for this is that emperor penguins prefer to live their entire lives without setting foot on solid ground. The classic Peninsula penguin species like gentoos, Adelies and chinstarps all breed on Antarctica’s rocky shores, making simple nests from pebbles. Emperor penguins are made of much tougher stuff. They live purely on the sea ice held fast to the continent, incubating their eggs on their feet through the freezing dark Antarctic winter. Don’t let Happy Feet fool you: these birds are some of the toughest creatures on Earth.
If you want to see emperor penguins then, you need a different itinerary to a regular Antarctic cruise. Last November I was lucky enough to join Swoop’s Emperor Penguin Expedition in Style, sailing to Snow Hill in the Weddell Sea in search of these incredible birds.
There are nearly 70 emperor penguin colonies dotted around Antarctica. Snow Hill is the northernmost colony on the continent, making it the most accessible place to see them. If you’re dreaming of emperor penguins, this is where to go.
Antarctica by helicopter
It’s worth nothing that ‘accessible’ here is a pretty relative term. The emperor penguin’s life cycle combined with the notorious ice conditions of the Weddell Sea means that trips can only run in November. On top of that, getting to the colony isn’t just a matter of anchoring the ship and making a classic Antarctic landing in a zodiac. No – even when you arrive at Snow Hill, the emperor penguin colony is still so far away it can only be reached by helicopter. As a result, only very few ships in the polar fleet have the capability to even attempt a visit here (I sailed on Ultramarine).
As a result, it’s believed that in the last five years fewer than 600 people have visited the emperors at Snow Hill. This alone makes it a very special place. And as I discovered, it more than repays the effort of getting there.
Helicopter flights aren’t on everyone’s list of things to do in Antarctica. I wasn’t the only one on board worried that just the sheer noisy fact of a helicopter might disturb the penguins. I needn’t have worried. To avoid just that, the helicopters aren’t allowed to fly within a mile of the colony itself. In groups of seven, we bundled aboard and made the 15–minute flight to the landing area an advance party of guides had marked out (aside: Antarctica looks incredible from the air. But that’s another story).
The flights are dependent on weather of course, but we were particularly blessed and the two helicopters (always operating in pairs for safety) shuttled back and forth until we were all on the ice.
Walking on the ice shelf
Landing a mile away was also great for building anticipation. We followed a marked route of flags for about 45 minutes until we came upon the colony itself.
Even the landscape played its part in building up our excitement. Unlike the Peninsula, which is like a great mountain range rising from the sea, here we were walking on the fast ice tethered to the mainland. Everything was perfectly flat until the landscape was broken by weird frozen sculptures erupting out of the ice: icebergs that that had been captured by the landscape. It looked vastly ancient, even though the ice constantly changes throughout the year. Antarctica is a great one for prompting clichés, but it really did look like nowhere else on Earth. Or possibly in the galaxy.
It was also ferociously bright. Without sunglasses, I felt like I might have gone snowblind in a moment, like so many of the explorers did during the time of Scott and Shackleton.
Finally, we heard the penguins. Weird metallic trumpets heralded our arrival – a fanfare like no other as the emperors called to each other. Others popped out from unexpected holes in the ice and tobogganed on their bellies to find their chicks. They had been out feeding at sea and were returning with stomachs full of krill and squid to feed the youngsters.
The emperors of Snow Hill
It’s hard to describe the spectacle of the colony, but thankfully my camera did most of the recording for me. The penguins can only be described as being in a great waddle of activity. The chicks were all grown up enough to start to become a little bit independent and curious. We could see them starting to wander off on their own, then get a bit nervous and scuttle back to join their friends. A few moments later a gang of two or three dozen would summon up the courage to explore as a group, and take a turn around a pillar of ice. Walking in a row they looked like a parade of cuddly hot water bottles, all fluffed up in their downy grey plumage.
The adults were no less striking of course. They’re so much bigger than any other penguin, standing around four feet (or nearly 120cm) tall, and posing with great calm to survey the scene – with imperial attitudes you might say. Most of the adults had a chick in tow at one point or another. I was even lucky enough to see the handover between a mother and father, as one parent arrived to feed the chick while the other clocked off to go and catch dinner themselves.
Getting to see the emperors was an emotional experience for many of the guests. For many this was the culmination of a long-held dream. There were plenty of happy tears. And you know it’s a great sign where the expedition team are just as excited as the guests: it reminded us all just how privileged were to be there.
No experience lasts forever but we had more than enough to drink our fill of emperor penguins. We know how lucky we had been with such fine weather, but suspected that even if fog had reduced our opportunities we’d still have been enthralled to have seen just a handful of penguins in their icy kingdom. You can never quite know what Antarctica will give you, but with Snow Hill we knew we’d been shown a face of the continent that it reveals to only a tiny number of people.
The emperors had called and we had answered!
*
