Among the tortured forms of colliding ice floes, amidst blowing snow and salt spray of the Ross Sea off the coast of Cape Hallett sits a lone Adélie penguin. She is grooming the feathers on her white breast, picking out loose down, smoothing the fibers of her soft insulating coat. Our Zodiac raft, carrying eleven expeditioners with cameras cocked inches forward as our driver positions the craft for the best angle to the penguin. She pays no heed. She has probably never seen people before and has no reason to fear us. The Zodiac bumps into the iceberg, a cap of crusty snow on top of a deep blue-green mass of translucent ice the size of a rock concert stage. The Adélie spreads her flippers and shakes her tail. Rat-a-tat exposures burst from rapid fire cameras. The paparazzi have nosed their raft up onto the berg to within a few meters of the grooming bird. She remains completely unfazed, concentrating intently on primping herself. Another day on a beach further south in the Ross Sea, a family of Weddell seals bask in the sunshine. They have sated themselves on penguins and fish in the fecund waters and now they rest on the sand, digesting their meals. Most lie still with their eyes closed. From time to time one has an urge to lift a flipper and scratch its belly. Periodically their somnolence is interrupted by a snort, a sneeze or a yawn. Then they roll over and continue their snooze. These animals are comfortable and their yawns are contagious.

To be this close to wild creatures in their own habitat is a remarkable experience. Their most striking quality is a lack of fear. They are completely at home and have no memory of the wholesale slaughter suffered by their species in decades past. A century ago, sealers set up “processing” stations on these beaches where they clubbed seals to death nearly to extinction, skinned them for pelts, carved up their fatty flesh for meat and boiled their blubber for oil. Penguins too were killed by the thousands. Steel “digesters” were installed on the beaches to cook their bodies and release the oil.  Live penguins were dumped into the digesters dozens at a time. Steam powered ships were even converted to use penguin carcasses in place of coal for fuel. Now this is all history. The whalers, sealers and penguin harvesters have all left after their target resource became too depleted to be economical. Some species were driven to extinction while others survived in numbers large enough to allow gradual recovery in the following decades. Now we are blessed with the opportunity to be with these marvelous creatures in their natural habitat where they are thriving once again.

Unfortunately, the future of their well-being is unclear. Adélie penguins build nests on rocky ground by collecting small stones and making little piles that keep their eggs off the wet ground. As sea levels rise and melting ice turns their rookeries into mud, will these birds be able to adapt? Their breeding behaviors have evolved over millions of years, but now they are facing changes in their habitat that are occurring in a few decades. Other animals, such as the polar bears of the north are critically dependent upon pack ice for hunting seals. Females must put on enough body fat to be able to suckle their cubs for months at a time without eating. As global temperatures rise, larger and larger regions of the ocean become free of ice. The impact on animals living in polar climes could be devastating, possibly even more profound than their exploitation for pelts and oils a hundred years ago.