Last Adventures at Palmer

Punta Arenas, Chile 2/7/09

My final days at Palmer Station were jam-packed. By day, fellow grantee and art-boat co-captain Oona and I crammed in as many Zodiac excursions as possible. In the evenings when Oona was in for the night, I started going out on rec (recreational) boat trips with anyone else from the station who was game for a little post-dinner sally. I was determined to experience and accomplish all I could before leaving Antarctica. Since I never knew exactly when or where interesting sounds would pop up, I adopted the strategy of simply making myself available to them as much as possible, and thus, I ended up having several marathon, 12-hour-plus adventure days. This was exhausting, of course, and certainly not sustainable over a long period of time. But I only had a handful of days remaining, and I figured I need only stumble onto the L.M. Gould when it returned to carry us north and collapse into bed. I could then sleep my way across the Drake Passage until we arrived back in Chile. In the meantime, there was work to be done.

On one of my evening rec boating excursions five of us motored out to DeLaca Island. Most of the islands in the Palmer Safe Boating Area have designated places for landing and tying up your boat. On DeLaca you must find your own safe landing place amidst slippery stones and breaking waves, keeping in mind whether the tide is coming in or out, and avoiding getting the motor hung up on rocks in the shallow water. We hunted around a bit and then pulled up against a steep rocky finger.

This was perhaps the most dicey landing I made the entire trip. Other people were finding it scary and they were not carrying a 30-pound backpack full of expensive recording equipment. As I climbed out of the bobbing boat onto slippery, slimy, algae-covered rocks that had to be traversed between incoming waves, I wished I had not stopped double drybagging my gear. If I was ever going to fall into the Southern Ocean surely this would be the occasion, and there would be consequences.

Fortunately several years of martial arts training and the traction on my La Sportiva boots prevailed. All five of us managed to scramble onto the island with no major incidents, only a wet boot or two. A couple of folks headed towards the southern half of the island where they were immediately dive-bombed by Antarctic Terns. Several pairs of these small, elegant birds have nests on that side of DeLaca and are very protective of their territory. Oona and I had landed over there previously and dodged a few swoops ourselves before we figured out the areas we should avoid. The vigilant terns also chased off several hovering skuas. This was highly entertaining to watch because the hungry skuas were much larger than the terns, but the smaller, faster birds flew circles around their predators, pestering them until they left. The Antarctic Terns sound a lot like squeaky toys to me and I enjoy the fact that these svelte, elegant aerialists have voices a lot like my rubber ducky. Here is what they sound like driving off a skua. (Recorded with Sennheiser MKH 40 and 30 mics on a Sound Devices 702).

The wind was blowing maybe 10-15 knots on top of DeLaca, an exposed island with some vertical relief. To have any chance at all of recording the terns, and not just a lot of wind and wave noise, I had to find a depression in the rocks where I could set up my microphones. Over the course of my stay in Antarctica, I became more and more proficient at utilizing the landscape to my advantage: as shelter from wind and precipitation, and to filter or block unwanted sounds (usually surf). The idea of using natural features to aid in field recording was not foreign to me, but the examples I was familiar with involved things like trees, which were conspicuously absent from my present location. Thus it took me a little while to cultivate an eye for the best Antarctic recording locations, but once I did I was much happier with the sounds I was able to capture.

Later that evening, we left DeLaca and headed over to Lipps, one of the few islands I had left to visit. There was only an hour left before boating hours ended and we were due back at the station, so once we landed everyone quickly ran off to explore the island’s periphery and scramble up its craggy top. Normally I would have joined them, as the excitement of being in a new place makes me want to get an overview of it first before settling in to investigate details. This time, however, I didn’t get much past our tie-up point.

There were a number of Kelp Gulls nesting nearby and, although I had seen and heard them every day, I suddenly realized I had no gull recordings. Furthermore, as they circled overhead, patrolling the small peninsula on which they were raising their chicks, the gulls were making some different sounds than their normal squawking voices (which are very similar to northern hemisphere seagulls). Here is a recording of the Kelp Gulls, also made with my Sennheisers and 702 in a sheltered dip in the rocks.

I spent almost all my hour with the gulls but did manage a sprint up to the island’s summit where I joined my friends for a quick appreciation of the stunning view. The sun was about to set behind our island and it was time for us to go. Happily we raced back to the station, zooming into the Zodiac parking lot just as boating hours officially came to a close. Thus ended another day in paradise.

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