Curious Traveler

-Greetings, curious travelers.

Today, we have a very special destination for you.

We are here in Antarctica and we're taking you unbelievably close to some amazing wildlife, like my little seal friends over here and my little whale friend over there, we got a whale.

(upbeat music) "Curious Traveler" is made possible by the following.

(air whooshing) -[Narrator 1] You can immerse yourself in the very soul of Europe, aboard a European Waterways luxury hotel barge cruise.

Europeanwaterways.com.

(bright music) (bright music) -Today, we are taking you to the only continent in the world with a human population of zero.

It is also the only continent in the world that is designated as a natural reserve devoted to peace and science.

Today, we are thrilled to be taking you to Antarctica.

(bright music) Bundle up because we are going on an icy and magical adventure to go incredibly close to see wow-worthy whales, perky little penguins and sassy seals who somehow make ice look cozy.

This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime journey to a place most people will never get to visit.

(bright music) So, here's what I'm curious about in Antarctica.

Who owns Antarctica?

What is a penguin highway?

Where can you find whales and Weddell seals?

Why are penguins black and white?

When was all this ice actually a lush green forest?

And how long can seals stay underwater and why do they look so cute?

Who, what, where, why, when and how?

So much to be curious about in Antarctica.

(gentle music) But before you can enjoy all of Antarctica's icy wonders, you have to get here first.

And that takes some commitment.

To get here, most Western travelers make their way to Ushuaia, Argentina at the southernmost tip of South America.

It is lovingly called the end of the world for a reason.

This is the last stop before leaving the continent and heading across the Drake Passage to Antarctica.

(gentle music) Throughout history, crossing the Drake Passage has been notorious for its dangerous rough seas and storms.

For the early explorers, it could take weeks to make this dangerous crossing if they made it at all.

(gentle music) But for us, it was only two days.

And don't hate us, but we got really, really lucky with the weather.

We traveled in February, which of course is summer in the Southern Hemisphere and we had beautiful, clear blue skies and barely any wind.

The normal nickname for the Drake Passage under stormy conditions is the Drake Shake.

But for us, it was more like the serene Drake lake.

(gentle music) Okay, now, that we've made it here with minimal amounts of seasickness, we are immediately rewarded and wowed by the beauty of Antarctica with its icy shapes and landscapes seen nowhere else on Earth.

(bright music) Antarctica is 5.5 million square miles big.

It would cover the United States, Mexico and most of Canada.

And 90% of it is under a 1.3-mile thick ice sheet.

Yes, you heard that correctly, 1.3 miles thick.

Now, before you get your hopes up, no, a visitor cannot just go tromping around anywhere they please here, or go swimming anywhere they please.

Although, who would want to swim in these 30-degree waters anyway?

Partly because you wouldn't survive in this extreme climate.

The lowest recorded temperature in Antarctica was 128 degrees below zero.

But mostly because Antarctica is restricted just for scientific research and the occasional, very careful, curious traveler.

So, most visitors will see just the Antarctic Peninsula.

But believe you, me, there is plenty to see here.

Our voyage takes us into wonderful little bays and nooks and crannies full of fascinating wildlife.

And why there is so much wildlife here, brings us to the question, "Who owns Antarctica?"

(bright music) In the late 18th century, Captain James Cook, becomes the first documented European explorer to cross the Arctic Circle.

Then by the 19th century, the Heroic Age was in full force, which was a race to see which nation would lay claim to this magical continent.

Fortunately, in 1959, the Antarctic Treaty was signed amongst 12 nations, which preserved this area as a demilitarized zone and most importantly, as a place for scientific research.

And that is why these happy little seals today, can flap about, lay in the sun and enjoy their home.

So, the Antarctic Treaty now includes more than 50 countries.

It states that no single country really owns, or rules over Antarctica.

Although, certain territories have a historic claim, a time zone and science stations associated with certain countries.

But the treaty clearly states that no country can build a military base here, or a shopping mall for that matter.

Which is just as it should be for the only year-round residents here, the seals, the whales and the penguins.

(bright music) So, let's go visit some of those year-round residents.

Our first furry friends we'll be visiting, are the sweet, smiling seals of Antarctica.

To tell us all about these slippery and often snoozing seals, is Therese Horntrich.

Therese is from Switzerland and grew up in the Alps, but apparently, that wasn't cold enough for her.

So, she became a marine mammal specialist in both the Arctic Circle and here in Antarctica.

We realized that getting to come to Antarctica is a gift.

Most people don't get to do this.

-Yeah.

-What kind of animals might somebody see on a trip like this?

-You have different seals.

You have crabeater seals, you have Weddell seals, you have leopard seals and then you have the whales, of course, as well.

So, sometimes, already now, we hear actually some whale blows around us.

-[Christine] Yeah, you never know who, or what might just swim by your Zodiac to say hi out here.

But I want to know specifically about these guys, the Weddell seals, named for British Explorer Captain James Weddell, who led expeditions here in the 1820s.

He was the first to discover and document this particular type of seal.

He also happens to have the entire Weddell Sea named for him, which at more than a million square miles, is the largest sea in Antarctica.

And those Weddell seals are only found here in Antarctica.

You can tell it's a Weddell seal by its large, round body, its small head and its cute, forward-facing eyes and its brown or gray splotches.

-Behind on these ice flow, we actually already have a Weddell seal.

-There is.

-In Antarctica, you have quite a lot of marine mammals, you have different seals.

Weddell seals, they're actually really good divers.

They can actually go down to 600 meters and they can stay down to up to an hour.

And also, the Weddell seal is one, which has this very blotchy pattern, I mean, we afterwards can- -I noticed that!

-Yeah, it's very individual.

It's like, yeah, each Weddell seal has a own pattern of these blotches on the belly.

-[Christine] And in fact, each blotch pattern is as unique as a human fingerprint.

Isn't that incredible?

So, this one must be Phyllis, this one must be Frank and this silly one of course is Dubert.

Okay, I made those names up.

Please do not try to call them by those names.

They will not respond.

What I haven't made up is this curious characteristic of most seals.

They all like to lay on their bellies on these hard chunks of ice, which they somehow make it look like the softest, most plush pillow-top mattress.

-It's a really cozy, nice seal, actually.

We see them often lying around on ice flows or on the beach and they're just basically resting and digesting when they're on land.

-Speaking of resting and digesting, and I know they're dangerous, but to me, they're just so cute.

I'm not gonna go and cuddle with one, but they're cute.

When they are snoozing and they kind of have their belly open like this up to the sun, how in the world can they think that this little swoop of ice is comfortable?

They look like they're laying in like a down- -They have a really fat layer of blubber around them.

So, that makes everything quite comfortable.

Even if you see them on a rocky pebble beach, they will just lie there and snooze and don't bother.

Because they have really, some of them five, six centimeters fat layers.

Now, we always say that in the polar regions, we say the best form is to be round.

Because you have the most volume, which produces heat and the least surface where you lose heat.

So, the form in the polar regions, you wanna be is round.

-Perfect, perfect.

I'm hitting the buffet again, it'll be great.

Next question, what's this I hear about a seal harem?

-Sometimes, you can have several seals on a ice flow.

They're mostly solitary, right?

They're not hanging together in groups.

You have other seals like fur seals or elephant seals.

And when they breed, they congregate in harems.

So, it's many, many seals.

-It's called a harem?

-Yeah, it's a harem.

So, one male has several females.

-Well, I mean, men.

-It's called a harem, yes.

But these guys, actually, they're solitary.

They just come together for mating.

The female is actually always a little bit bigger than a male with the crabeaters and with the leopard and with the Weddell seals as well.

They're all true seals.

-Oh, that's fascinating!

So, you say that the female and the male really only come together for breeding.

-Yes, yeah.

-And then she needs her quiet time.

-Exactly, she will do all the rest by herself.

-Oh, that's typical.

What are you gonna say?

And then there's the leopard seal with a face only a mother could love, who is the arch-enemy of the penguin.

-So, often, you have high chances to see a leopard seal if you're around the penguin colonies, because they just wait until the first brave ones go, jump into the water.

Then it's always, you see the penguin standing on the shore line, "No, you first, no, you first.

I don't know, no, no, maybe not."

And then, at some point, one goes and the rest follows.

And the leopard seal is right there to catch a penguin.

But it needs to eat as well.

-It's nature, I know.

And we're watching from afar, going, "Aren't they so cute?"

They're going for a swimming like, "Oh, no, buddy, oh, no, you're the first one, your fate doesn't look good."

-Yeah, yeah.

-Don't worry, we didn't see any leopard seals lunching on our favorite tuxedoed friends.

Just a few Weddell seals continuing to nap away on this gorgeously sunny day, magically making those chunks of ice look comfortable.

(bright music) In fact, let's go visit where those perky penguins live by the rule, safety in numbers.

There are four main species of penguins here in Antarctica and we saw two of them, the chinstrap, named for that cute little chinstrap stripe under its beak and the gentoo penguin with its orange beak and who looks like he's permanently wearing a set of headphones with that white stripe across his head.

And to visit some seriously cute gentoos, we go to Cuverville Island, which happens to be home to the largest gentoo penguin colony in all of Antarctica.

Scientists have counted about 8,000 nests here, meaning about 16,000 adult penguins, plus all of their adorable baby chicks.

And they all like to talk at once.

(penguins braying) So, it's no surprise that every once in a while, a penguin might want to break off from the pack for a little bit of quiet time.

One of the most amazing things we have learned here about penguin behavior is if you look over my shoulder here up onto this mountainside, those little lines that are coming down, those were not made by skis, certainly not made by humans, those are actually the pathways for the penguins.

And it's a really cute name for it.

It's called the penguin highway.

So, as a human visitor, we're not supposed to go anywhere near there, but it's really cute.

If you kind of watch it for a long enough time, you'll see all the little penguins going up.

And I'm really rooting for this guy.

I haven't given him a name yet, but I will.

Right now, he's taking a little break.

But every couple of minutes or so, he'll kind of stand up and make his way up and then he kind of falls forward again and takes a little nap.

So, we're just gonna hang out here and see if little George, that'll be his name, see if little George gets back up again.

I think he will.

I could watch these guys all day.

It's amazing to see the long grooves that the penguins dig to create their penguin highways up the mountain.

You can see that they're pretty polite, no need for a traffic light when crossing up and down these thoroughfares.

My favorite part is that when a penguin gets tired, he just plops down in the middle of a highway, no traffic jam, everybody just chills out and waits.

Although, this little guy clearly is telling his mom, or his mates that he's had enough and would love a piggyback ride to the top.

Ah, well, maybe penguin escalators will be built in the next generation.

(funky music) To learn more about penguin highways and other wonderfully curious penguin behaviors, I met up with Julia Benson, a naturalist and marine mammal specialist.

We are thrilled to be here.

I don't think I've ever seen so many penguins in my life.

And the second we arrived, everybody starts going like this Do you get tired of seeing that, or is that like a good, it shows enthusiasm?

(Christine laughs) -It's great, yeah.

And it's always exciting to come down.

And I've been here, what, seven seasons?

So, I've seen penguins.

I've also lived on an island with them for a few months.

-Amazing!

-So, with gentoos and they're always entertaining.

There's always something to watch and see and you never get tired of watching them.

-I have to hear about living on an island with gentoo penguins, what did that entail?

-That was working for the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust.

-Wow!

-So, they run a site called Port Lockroy.

-Yep.

-Also known as the Penguin Post Office.

And there were four of us living on a small island about the size of a football pitch with around 555 nests was what we counted.

So, question number one, why do penguins walk, or is it waddle, the way that they adorably do?

Everybody just really loves the penguin walk.

It's a matter of balancing, I would assume.

They've got this nice, big belly.

Actually, is that a big belly?

We shouldn't say that.

They're perfectly proportioned.

-Yep, it is.

-Yeah.

-So, they put their flippers out.

They've also got long tail feathers as well, which will help them give them a bit of balance.

But really, it's just the flippers.

They waddle along.

And they have quite long legs.

-[Christine] Oh, okay.

-And one question people ask is "Do penguins have knees?"

And yes, they do.

-Yes, they do.

They're just up there under the feathers.

-Yes.

-[Christine] Question two, why do they swim like they do?

So we saw them swimming kind of like this.

And they sort of swim like dolphins.

-Yeah, porpoising.

-[Christine] Yeah!

-So, they'll do that if they're swimming at speed, it's so that they can breathe.

And also, when they're coming into the colony, they'll do that just to break up their silhouette in the water.

Because they'll have predators, mainly leopard seals that will hang around at the colonies to feed on them.

So, that's why they porpoise and they'll come in in groups.

They also leave the colony in groups as well.

-Safety in numbers.

-Exactly.

-Safety in numbers.

Question three, why are penguins always wearing their little tuxedos, as in why are they black and white?

Their distinct black and white tuxedo outfits, they have.

I would assume, here's a big question, it's evolution.

They've got the white to kind of blend in with the snow, but then also the black or the darkness to blend in with the rocks and mountains things.

-It's meant for when they're actually in the water, it's called countershading.

-Oh, yeah!

-So, when they're in the water, anything beneath them looking up, the white blends in with the light that's coming down from the surface of the water.

-Okay.

-And anything that's above them looks down, you've got the darker, the depth.

So, the black of their back blends in.

-Countershading can be found on all types of animals from our little penguin friends, to deer, to dogs and cats, to even your favorite teddy bear.

How that helps with a teddy bear, I'm not quite sure, but their little tummy sure are cute.

Last question, back to those precious and peculiar penguin highways, why are penguins so polite?

If another one's in the way, they just kind of wait- -Yeah.

-Until someone else goes and then they go around.

-Yeah.

-[Christine] Yep, they have manners.

-[Julia] And that's typical of gentoos.

They're very relaxed, very calm penguins.

-So, it's two tracks going up the mountain and two going like this.

I'm wondering who has the right of way at the intersection?

-Good question, I don't know, I've never figured that out.

But they somehow work it out.

So, they'll walk along and then sometimes, one penguin will just stop and then the others are coming up behind it and kind of, "Well, come on, move."

But they figure out a way.

They kind of pass each other and I love it.

-That's right, no road rage here along the penguin highway.

We humans could learn a thing or two from our relaxed feathered friends.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, little George did finally make it to the top.

(bright celebratory music) (gentle music) Okay, so, we've learned about the seal residents, the penguin residents and a few human visitors.

But there is one more category of resident here that floats like the whales, rests like the seals and sometimes, even squawks like the penguins.

Let me introduce you to them, they're quite pretty.

The majestic glaciers, icebergs and ice flows of Antarctica.

There are little inlets all around the Antarctic coast, called iceberg graveyards where icebergs, which are normally drifting, have gotten stuck.

Remember, 90% of an iceberg is underwater.

And when those bottoms get stuck, the 10% at the top sticks out above the water and creates these little watery sculpture collections.

(gentle music) So, icebergs, wouldn't you know it, have wonderful curiosities to them.

Icebergs are actually chunks from a larger glacier.

And every so often, you might hear the sound that kind of sounds like an avalanche or thunder.

And that is a chunk of the ice falling off of the glacier to create the iceberg.

This process is actually called calving.

It's kind of like it's giving birth to these little smaller icebergs, not that this thing is small.

And then once it does each and every iceberg, no matter what the size is, is always drifting just a little bit.

And of course, we only see the small portion on the top and a whole lot more is underneath.

My favorite things about these icebergs though is the shapes that are naturally created.

Sometimes, you get stripes, sometimes you get swoops.

You can actually see some of those stripes here at the bottom.

And the really, really condensed ice, that is that gorgeous crystal aquamarine blue.

And with this one in particular, you can see these gorgeous shapes on the top and then a little swoop here underneath, we can see yet another iceberg in the back.

And all of it looks like it was actually created by an artist.

(gentle music) Mother Nature's artistry at its finest.

I'm already counting penguins.

To find out more about the ice, the icebergs, the mountains and the general geology, I zipped along in my trustee Zodiac to Mikkelsen Harbor to land at D'Hainaut Island, which is about a half square mile in size.

Time to see some penguins!

Yee!

(Christine laughs) It was first charted by French explorers in 1910.

It was mostly used as a whaling station.

And you can see a creepy little graveyard of sorts here with old ships and an old whale skeleton.

But I'd rather watch the many, many gentoo penguins here, living their best lives here in the unique Antarctic environment.

To tell us more about this other-worldly landscape, is geologist Marcos Goldin.

So, when somebody's lucky enough to come here, we focus on the penguins, which are all around us, the seals and the whales and the wildlife, but we also need to focus on the landscape.

And you as a geologist, the perfect person to talk to.

-In this case, we have a lot of igneous rocks, because the Antarctic Peninsula where we are stepping foot right now, was at some point a volcanic arc, an old magmatic arc that's now extinct.

Rocks are the only ones that can stand the test of time.

It's like our own time machine in a way.

Of course, now we know it as this wide and icy place and very cold and very barren.

But before, it was very different.

It held forests and that is all possible by studying the rock then.

-So, at one point in time, millions of years ago, this would've been grassland and maybe dinosaurs roaming here.

And what would the temperature have been?

Would there have even been snow?

-Yeah, so, no snow at all.

-That's crazy.

-Not even in the winter time, not these ice sheets that we know today and the temperatures were on average around 15 to 20 degrees Celsius.

-That's amazing.

-So, super, super warm.

-Yep, that's right, it might be hard to picture, but around a hundred million years ago, all this ice and snow was once a forest with dinosaurs happily munching away on their leafy greens, way before kale was the trendy thing, including one dinosaur named Antarctopelta.

Maybe, because he's going to pelt you with that scary-looking tail of his.

(funky music) What I think is fascinating, back when there was only one landmass, Pangaea and then Gondwanaland and Laurasia, if you put the puzzle pieces together, Antarctica matched up with the coast of Australia.

-Well, Antarctica- -Am I close?

-Antarctica was attached to Australia definitely.

-Amazing.

-It's amazing.

And Antarctica was even more important than other land masses, because it was pretty much in the center.

It was center stage to a lot of these different continents that we know today.

So, it was connected to Australia, but also to Africa and in South America.

So, it was kind of in the middle of it all.

-Were these warm places?

-Very warm places back then.

-It's really fascinating when you think about it.

All the continents are like puzzle pieces that used to be fused together into one giant super continent.

Look, here's the coast of Antarctica.

And it still matches up pretty darn closely with the coast of Australia.

How curious.

Talk about the things that are put in place to preserve the continent, protect the wildlife and make sure that this pristine continent stays the way that it is.

-We developed Citizen Science programs and collaborate with different scientists that come here.

-Citizen Science is a worldwide program run by government agencies and private scientific organizations where regular people volunteer to gather data about wildlife and report it back to the scientists, who then use it in their research.

During our visit here in Antarctica, a Citizen Science program collected data about humpback whales.

But for the professional scientists, who need to do some really in-depth, long-term study, may I draw your attention to this cute, little red hut back here on our island?

There are less than a hundred of these little cabins dotted across Antarctica.

Now, it may not look like much, but in these conditions, any type of shelter seems like the Ritz.

These science stations, so what we think about as visitors, we're like, "Are you kidding me?

Three people live together in a hut?"

Have you ever done that, or how does that even work with the scientific research stations?

-Yeah, I haven't particularly stayed in a scientific research for long.

But here in Antarctica, there are not only summertime stations, but all-year-round stations.

So, people actually over winter in Antarctica and for many seasons at a time.

But there's a lot of fun stories about it.

In fact, there's one fun story that a doctor didn't want to be over winter again, so, he burned up the research station- -I like that's one solution.

-A very well-known one.

(Christine laughs) So, lots of things can happen, also a lot of commitment of their mission here and what they're here to do.

-It's all for a very important reason, not vacation.

(funky music) So, from a Drake Shake to a Drake lake, to a treaty that preserves this land for scientific study and for the safety of some snoozing seals, to a peninsula full of perfectly polite penguins, who never get road rage along their penguin highways, to fascinating scientific discoveries, including a time when this ice wasn't ice, but in fact, a green land that dinosaurs found to be quite nice.

Antarctica has so much to be curious about.

(funky music) Thank you for joining us on our educational journey.

And hopefully, now, you're even more curious about the who, what, where, why, when and how's of magical Antarctica.

Have a whale of a time, but remember, stay off those penguin highways.

(funky music) Closed caption funding provided by- -[Narrator 2] Eden Andalou Aquapark & Spa, an all-inclusive luxury resort in Marrakech.

Moroccan-inspired suites, authentic cuisine, all set in a desert oasis.

-[Christine] "Curious Traveler" is made possible by the following.

(air whooshing) -[Narrator 1] You can immerse yourself in the very soul of Europe, aboard a European Waterways luxury hotel barge cruise.

Europeanwaterways.com.

(gentle music) (bright music) -[Narrator 3] Still curious?

Go to curioustravelertv.com and find our links to follow us on social media.

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