Macquarie Island Magic #2

from Tim Page

on board the Australian Icebreaker "Aurora Australis"

anchored at Buckles Bay, Macquarie Island

December 1, 1999, 4:45pm

Howdy to the students and staff of Doyon and Winthrop Schools, and

particularly to the classes of Ms. O'Brien, Ms. O'Reilly, Mr. Beal, Ms.

Watson and Ms. Kelly!!

PRESENT POSITION: 54 degrees South Latitude, 158 degrees East Longitude

DIRECTION HEADING: -

SHIP SPEED: -

DISTANCE FROM TASMANIA: 835 nautical miles

DISTANCE TO DUMONT D'URVILLE, ANTARCTICA: 914 nautical miles

AIR TEMPERATURE: 4.0 degrees Celsius

WATER TEMPERATURE: 5.0 degrees Celsius

WIND SPEED: 18.5 knots

HUMIDITY: 64%

Wow! I'm afraid that it's the only possible way to start when talking about

Macquarie Island. It is just amazing, almost beyond words. I have been

ashore twice now. We go in little inflatable boats from our ship through

the surf to the beach. Once you get onto the beach, it's almost impossible

not to trip over an Elephant Seal or a penguin.

They are everywhere!! Enormous, fat old seals are lying all over the place,

looking almost exactly like Jabba the Hut. They burp and fart and wallow in

the mud just behind the beach. The big males are the biggest seals in the

world, and can weigh as much as 5000 kilos (that's 11,000 pounds!). Adult

males have a great big nose, which they can inflate when they are angry, and

so they look a bit like elephants. The seals give birth in October, so the

young seals are now about 2 months old, and weaned, which means they don't

get milk from their mothers any more. Killer whales patrol the beaches,

looking to gobble up a young seal. Adult seals can dive down to 1800 metres

(5,900 feet) beneath the sea to catch one of their favourite meals, squid.

There are also fur seals on the beach. I suppose you can guess that means

they have lots of fur. They are smaller than the Elephant Seals and look

quite a lot like big dogs.

As I walked along the beach to the research station, I was accosted by some

King Penguins. They are very inquisitive birds. When you sit down, they

will come over to check you out, and give you a little peck to see what you

are. Charlie Chowder (the world famous travelling clam) got a little peck

from a passing penguin, but Charlie asked the penguin to stop, which of

course he did as most penguins are very polite. As you walk along the beach

you come to a bunch of rocks on the shore, and here you find the Rockhopper

Penguins, and yes, they do hop among the rocks. They are smaller and have a

yellow crest of feathers on their head, which makes them look like punk

rockers. They could learn a few lessons in politeness from their King

penguin cousins, because they are a lot noisier and more aggressive. Just

back from the beach is a colony of Gentoo Penguins, who have a little white

patch just behind their eye. Believe it or not, there is a fourth species

of penguin on Macca, the Royal Penguin, which looks like a Rockhopper but

with a pale face.

The base is on an isthmus, with hills on either side. When you climb up

them you get a great view over the island with the ship anchored just

offshore and enormous albatrosses and great petrels reelling over your head.

Magic!

Macquarie island ("Macca") is an Australian sub-antarctic island that lies

below New Zealand on the map, part of the way to Antarctica. It is a skinny

island, 35 kilometres long and 5 kilometres wide (how many miles is that?).

At the very northern end is the ANARE Station (that stands for Australian

National Antarctic Research Expeditions). Most of the island is on a

plateau 200-300 metres high, and is covered in tussock, which is a kind of

long grass; there are no trees at all.

Macca was discovered in 1810 by a ship looking for seals. Not long after

that many ships came here and killed almost all of the seals. The Elephant

Seals and penguins were used to make oil (so were whales) and the fur seals

were skinned for their pelts. This was a time before people had worked out

how to use petroleum to make oil. It was very nearly a disaster for the

seals. They survived, but only just, and very nearly were wiped out. The

sealers stopped coming to island because there were no longer enough seals.

Happily a few elephant seals survived and now there are thousands. Fur

seals weren't so lucky. They became extinct on Macca, and are only now

slowly returning from other islands.

One interesting question is why are there so many different types of penguin

on one island? Why isn't there just one kind of penguin in the whole world.

This is due to evolution. You see if a group of animals finds themselves

isolated on a distant spot (like a small island) for a long enough time,

they will eventually change little by little each generation to help them

adapt to the new environment. After a while it will become an entirely new

animal. When one species turns into a number of species, it's called

"speciation". So if distant cousins then start arriving on the island, they

will not be able to breed with them any more. So there will be two

different but closely related species on the island, which look and act

slightly differently. New species are constantly forming and becoming

extinct as life changes; that's why when you go to the museum and look at

how animals were millions of years ago, they are mostly very different from

what is alive now. In the future, people (or some other intelligent

species) will look back and think how strange our animals were!

Do you remember in the last email I mentioned my room mate was a krill

scientist called Simon? Well he studies genetics (ask your teachers about

that one!). He looks at how closely different species are related to each

other. A few months ago he was doing some field research and he found an

entirely new species of crustacean, which is a group of animals with hard

outside shells and two pairs of antennae, like lobsters and shrimps. Let

him tell you about it:

"Last year I was helping a friend to collect some plants in the lowlands

just near the coast of Tasmania. While I was doing this I noticed some

small wriggly creatures in some pools in the forest. I am a keen biologist

and I always take a net with me, so I caught some of the creatures with it.

Later on, after I had wiped all the mud and the big bloodsucking leeches off

my boots, I was surprised to see that the creatures were smaller versions of

the Tasmanian mountain shrimp.

"The Tasmanian mountain shrimp is a curious creature. The most interesting

thing about it is that it hasn't changed at all since the time of the

dinosaurs 220 million years ago. You can see these shrimps swimming in

pools on the mountains of Tasmania and think that you're seeing the same

thing that a thirsty Allosaurus might have seen when it stopped to drink

some water. These shrimps are about 5cm (2 inches) long and you only find

them high up on mountains where snow falls in winter.

"This new species has tiny eyes compared to their mountain-dwelling cousins

and are patterned like army camouflage. They probably don't need big eyes

as they spend most of their time wriggling about in swamps. The patterns

probably help them hide from things that might eat them. It was exciting to

find a new species of animal that nobody has seen before. I think I will

call it the Tasmanian swamp shrimp."

Thanks Simon, that was very cool. I tried to convince Simon to call the new

animal the Tasmanian Swamp Thing, but wisely he decided against it.

RESEARCH QUESTION

---------------------------------

I'd better go, I'm sure I've bored you enough already. But first here's a

little thing you can research on your own. Can you find out about animals

that have became extinct? One animal which might interest you to research

was called a Great Auk (Alca impennis), because it lived near you in the

North Atlantic and looked very much like a penguin!!!

Tonight we are heading due south to the pack ice and the French research

station, Dumont D'Urville, on the Antarctic Continent. Have fun and I'll

write again soon.

Tim Page