The Antarctic Circle Party

from the Ray I. Doan Photographic Collection

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On our voyage to the Continent we had been in pack ice with 90% to almost solid ice. It got boring with the same smashing of ice all day and all night, although there really wasn't night. The sky was solid overcast so we couldn't tell where the sun was but from about 11PM to 2AM it was a dark twilight.

The Staff worked hard to keep everyone occupied with lectures and whatever else they could think of to keep us busy. One game they came up with, was to guess when we would cross the Antarctic Circle, which is 66º South Latitude. You must be south of the Antarctic Circle to have 24 hours of sunlight in the summer or 24 hours of darkness in the winter. At exactly 66º South Latitude you have one day 24 hour sunlight which is December 21st.

It was easy to estimate what time when we would reach the Antarctic Circle. All you had to do was go to the bridge and check out a navigational computer which would calculate our arrival time, to the second, based on our average speed. The only problem with that system was, that it didn't work, because our average speed changed from minute to minute.

Whenever we found the rare spot of open water the ship would accelerate up to 18 knots. Especially thick pack ice would slow the ship down to 3 knots. When the ship occasionally got up to full speed and then ran into heavy pack ice it sent a giant shudder through the ship that would knock off your feet if you weren't careful. They always aimed the ship at the open leads of water. If all they could find was a crack six inches wide they steered for that, so we never traveled in a straight line.

I guessed we would cross the Antarctic Circle at 2Pm and lost when we got there at 1:17PM. The Staff Announced that we were going to have a Champagne Party to celebrate getting south of the Antarctic Circle. It really was sort of special as very few tourists do it because you have to be on an icebreaker to get that far south.

They stopped the ship in the middle of a large ice flow and put down the long boarding stairs. Everyone donned their Red Parkas, grabbed their camera, and disembarked the ship for a walk on the Antarctic Circle. The ship's crew setup big tables on the ice and served everyone Champagne. It was a fun event.

Peter Harrison, our on board sea bird expert, had everyone pose at the bow of the ship for a group portrait. I have to give you a little background for the next part of the story. The main purpose of our expedition was to visit Emperor Penguin Rookeries, so Emperor Penguins were on everyone's mind. Up to the Antarctic Circle Party we had seen two Emperor Penguins, far out on the ice, while the ship was under way. So, any mention of Emperor Penguins got instant attention.

While we standing for our group portrait (shown above) someone shouted, 'Look there's two Emperor Penguins'. They were way off, at least a half a mile away, tobogganing on their stomachs toward us. Peter Harrison then said, 'Oh yes, we hired these two penguins to come over to our party so we can take their picture'. There were a lot of 'Oh sures', but no one was about to leave until we found out what the birds were going to do. Then Peter said, 'We also told them to stand up when they get 15 or 20 feet away, so we can get better pictures of them'.

Sure enough, the two Emperor Penguins came right up to our big group of 90 people and stand up. It was unbelievable! Virtually every single person there had a camera so those two penguins may be the most photographed wild Emperor Penguins in history. Anyway, it was a great start to Emperor Penguin viewing.

A few days later Peter Harrison explained. An Emperor Penguin has never seen anything standing up on the ice in Antarctica except another penguin, there just is nothing else. When they see a lot of things standing up, off in the distance, they naturally assume we are penguins.

The Emperor Penguin is a Social bird. Since they like company, when they saw our group they just decided to come over and hang out. The Emperor Penguin has better eyesight under water than out of the water. On the ice, they're near sighted, so they had to get 15 or 20 feet away from us before they decided we were not penguins. At that point they felt threatened, so they stood up.

In any event Peter's 'hired' story built around what he knew would be the bird's behavior was a real cute story.

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This page was last updated: March 15, 2008