Climate Change-Penguins Confirm Concept from the Ends of the Earth

By Bill Henry

Posted 1 day ago

Penguins as far as the horizon, icebergs calving, humpbacked and orca whales, an active volcano.

These are highlights of a 10-day Antarctic expedition over the Christmas break, in which Owen Sound student Laurissa Christie was among 60 Students on Ice.

The excursion — her second trip to a polar region — confirmed what Christie saw in the Canadian Arctic 18 months ago and reaffirmed plans to pursue science at university in environmental studies, with a focus on the polar regions.
Signs of climate change are more obvious in the Canadian north, where Christie saw vast areas of land that were covered in glaciers until recent years.

That impact is harder to assess in Antarctica, which remains a pristine, untouched landscape, inhabited by a small number of researchers studying the outer edges of a “huge continent full of ice.”
“We saw basically everything that Antarctica has to offer and we really — as cliche as it sounds — the scary part for me is that we only saw the tip of the iceberg,” Christie said this week. “I think what I realized about that environment is how precious it is and how we really do need to protect it.”

Seeing the polar regions convinced her how great and far reaching are the consequences of individual actions and how behaviour has to change.
“I think I learned that every action really does make a difference,” she said. “That message for me is to care and learn as much about the environment as possible and by doing that spread awareness.”
That’s a message she’s taking to school classrooms, community groups and the regional science fair. It was her gold medal science fair project in 2009 that earned her the trip to the Arctic with Students on Ice and planted the desire to follow up with a trip to the Antarctic.

Christie brought back new, firm friendships with students from across Canada, the U.S., and several other countries, along with about 5,000 photographs. Her favourite shows a single Adelie penguin floating on ice in a clear blue water with a frozen ice wall as a backdrop.
Visitors are supposed to stay five metres from the penguins, but as the students crouched among one of Antarctica’s largest colonies at the Danger Islands, the curious creatures wandered within reach.

“We just all spread out and were really quiet,” she said. “I was just pretty much in awe.”

Later, some students hiked to the top of Paulette Island, an active volcano. From there, the penguins were massed as far as the eye could see.
“There were just millions upon millions of them.”
The expedition staff of 30 included glaciologists, biologists and other researchers, as well as physicians, a musician, a visual artist, journalists, a film crew and other. Students helped with some of the research, including bird counts, studying penguin behaviour, measuring and collecting snow and ice data and collecting ocean plankton samples which will help understand the impact of climate change.

Scientists also want to learn how warmer water is affecting populations of krill — a small, shrimp-like crustacean that lives in very cold water and is eaten by whales.
While it was summer in Antarctica, the “chilly” weather ranged between about -10 C and 3 C.
Christie said she is still processing what she learned about herself and the planet, which boils down to a new, greater appreciation of her own environment and a renewed urge to “get outside.”

“We live in one of the coolest places in the world. We have the Bruce Peninsula. We have so much life and so much all around us that we really do need to learn about what is in our backyard before we can help the world,” she said. “With climate change, we never know what can happen, so let’s just appreciate it.”

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