All the participants in the XXXIV Spanish Antarctic Campaign asked say the same thing: it has been "very rare", but it has been carried out despite all the problems that existed on their route to the south in this strange year of covid-19.
A new scientific project has even been started on “recycle penguins” that will provide another image of some birds with a fundamental role for life on the white continent.
A few days after the return of the polar scientists, and when the
Sarmiento de Gamboa
ship
is still crossing, the general summary of the few that have participated this year is that they have worked piecemeal to make the most of the little time available, and also sadness, when remembering the soldier of the ship
Hespérides
who died after detecting an outbreak of coronavirus on board the ship when it began its frustrated trip to Antarctica in January.
“Fortunately, once there, everything has gone well in that sense, but after going through a quarantine that became heavy in Punta Arenas (Chile) because we could not leave the hotel room, but it worked,” recalls Rafael Abella, from the Institute National Geographic.
The return, as another scientist remembers, Miguel Ángel de Pablo (the permaphrot expert at the University of Alcalá de Henares), was not easy either because a storm in the Sea of Sickles, which you have to cross to go from the Antarctic Peninsula to the South America, forced them to wait several days, already on board, to avoid waves of more than 12 meters.
A drone flies over the Deception Island penguin rookery.
PiMetAn
Thus, with a lot of collaboration between one and the other, given that it was not easy to move from one island to another, it was possible to maintain for another year the collection of time series data in both scientific bases, series that are essential to maintain works that have taken years ongoing: seismic monitoring, permafrost (the permanently frozen layer of soil), the state of glaciers or volcanic activity.
They also managed to carry out part of the work of six other scientific projects.
All in an atmosphere of great tranquility, because there were neither visits from bases in other countries nor tourists have been seen on the horizon, except for a small sailboat that approached through the caldera of Decepción Island.
The only project on the “first-run” bases has been that of the “recycle penguins”.
Actually, the official name is PiMetAn and its objective is to find out what role these seabirds have, of which there are an estimated 17 million, in the cycles of metals that take place in the Southern Ocean, something that no one has studied so far and that it is essential to know how they fit into the Antarctic food chain.
“We presented the idea of the project two years ago, because it is known that krill excretes metals such as cadmium, arsenic, phosphates or lead that they ingest with particles that come from volcanoes, and then some of these metals feed the plant microorganisms that make up phytoplankton.
If the penguins eat krill, we want to find out what their role is in this metal recycling ”, explains Antonio Tovar, from the Institute of Marine Sciences of Andalusia (ICMA-CSIC), who is the main researcher of the project and has been at the
Gabriel
base
of Castilla.
enlarge photo Antonio Tovar, Gabriel Navarro and David Roque, together with a hexacopetero drone, in Antarctica, during this campaign.
The photos he sends give an idea of the scale of the PiMetAn deployment on Deception Island, despite the fact that there were only three of the seven researchers originally planned.
They can be seen diving in the icy polar waters (at 2ºC!), Flying drones over the gigantic Morro Baily penguin colony, fishing with nets from the zodiacs or collecting the pinkish excrement of the friendly chinstrap that, always curious, would come to observe to those strange beings interested in their
poop
.
“This year we wanted to have also studied populations of Adelie and Gentoo penguins to see if the composition of their guano is the same, but we could not go to Livingston Island, and they are not in Decepción, so we have left it for the next campaign, that we do hope to be at the Juan Carlos I base, "says the scientist, after returning from what is his third Antarctic campaign.
The most striking feature of its equipment were the five drones in the luggage, which incorporated RGB cameras with zoom, multispectral and hyperspectral.
If with one he captured images, with others they could detect thermal differences and thus distinguish the penguins from other black spots in the landscape.
The objective, explains the researcher, was to achieve an algorithm that allows counting specimens at a height of 100 meters.
“It was the first time that something like this has been done.
It is a technology that opens up many possibilities for Antarctic science.
Right there, in the field, we began to collaborate with the IGN [National Geographic Institute] to take images of the fumaroles of the Decepción volcano, making thermal maps, and also with other researchers who study mosses.
We wanted to see if penguin guano generates chlorophyll because it is a source of nutrients that goes to the sea.
In places like Morro Baily there are tons and its effect on the environment, how it is nourishing the water is unknown ”.
What has been said: recyclers in the circular cycle of nature.
Another of the tasks that they left pending for the next campaign has been to dive near this spectacular penguin colony of tens of thousands of chinstrap specimens and collect sediment up to a meter deep to find out what has happened there for centuries.
It was not possible because the
Hespérides
was not there
to transport them, but they did dive into the great bay of Port Foster, where they collected clams, starfish and urchins for their study.
And they enjoyed only 15 meters deep "a place that is full of a life difficult to imagine when seen from above, with penguins that cross between their legs and some sea lions."
Samples of red algae have even been brought in, which appears to be accelerating the thaw.
The PiMetAn group —which Gabriel Navarro and David Roque were also part of— spent barely 20 days in Antarctica (the longest), but it spread.
“Once we know what role these
metal
recyclers
play
in the Antarctic food chain, we will be able to hypothesize what will happen if their number decreases, as is already happening due to the thaw, because what exists on this continent is a perfect balance of the life, and it is enough for one edge to weaken for the whole to suffer ”, concludes the Andalusian scientist.
Back in the world of masks, distances and confinements, now all those who went are only thinking of getting to work with the materials that the
Sarmiento de Gamboa
ship will bring them back
in a few weeks.