Newton's Apple; No. 1006

You You're invited to a special birthday bash it's gonna be a real adventure be sure to wear your thermal tuxedo because we're going south Hi, I'm George P. Happy anniversary to Newton's Ample

Newton's apple is made possible by grant from 3M encouraging innovative ways of looking at the world around us 3M innovation working for you Welcome to the bottom of the world and welcome to Newton's Apple show that answers your questions about science technology and the world around you don't worry there's nothing wrong with your television set this is a special edition of Newton's Apple we brought

you to the southernmost continent on the surface of the earth Antarctica as you can see around it up a couple of my new friends to help show you around but let's go back to the beginning like how did I get here it's a little bit like an adventure movie the adventure begins in Miami Florida takes me 8 hours into the skies of South America plenty of time to read up on my destination but am I ready for this I've been invited to be a guest at the United States Research Station Palmer my first destination is Chile the western hemisphere's gateway to the Antarctic and lucky for me it's summertime in the southern half of the world but there's no time for a tan it's still a long way across the mountains of southern Chile as I rest up for adventure on the next continent to the south three days and four rather long plane rides has brought us this far southern tip of mainland South America but before the next

part of the trip there was plenty to do the Chilean port the Punta de Aranas has always been a stopping point for travelers navigating the southern waters in recent years it has become a gathering place for researchers on their way even further south in a warehouse nestled in the busy shipyards I found the National Science Foundations Outfitting Service a Roman Vidal Villegas and his energetic staff awaiting to supply me with my protective clothing and gear yes I need to get out for the end of the day the warehouse of Antarctic support associates was crammed sky high with the latest high-tech expedition gear holder fleece happily polypropylene Gore-tex and insulated booths as far as you could see my personal collection was growing fashionable as well it might look like a lie but when worn in layers it will keep you warm and dry in the wet and windy Antarctic peninsula temperatures hover around freezing this time of year the biggest danger is a

fall into the icy water 15 minutes is about how long anyone has expected the last I'll try and avoid that okay David this is your stuff all right alone yeah all this don't have to wear it all at once do you whatever happened to a good old-fashioned sweater I still have these but you forgot your gloves you know oh thank you yes what I need this might be fine in Antarctica but it's sweltering in here the next day a discovered red would be this trip's fashion statement my traveling companions would be a group of engineers and government officials who were headed down to the US research station along with a lot of supplies since this trip is taken infrequently a military C-130 would be the vehicle of choice for this next leg of the journey there's no business section on this plane in the military it's all business supplies were packed in the large cargo area in back we were packed up front in three hours we would be in the Antarctic

all right get the picture it's loud in here no chance for meaningful conversations but when flying commercial how often do you get to wander into the cockpit meet your flight group next stop King George Island only airstrip on the west side of Antarctica ah back on firm ground not for long from here we continue our journey over water the aerobus will be home for the next 24 hours as we navigate the Brandsfield straight as our ship picked up speed I took the opportunity to look around the aerobus is a French-owned vessel that has traveled these frigid waters for over eight years in that time it's ferried researchers from all over the world

Captain Alexander Vicer has chauffered them all through what many call the world's most dangerous waters what is it that you like most about being out of a sensation of freedom sensation of freedom sensation to be really the master of the expedition and the companion ship where the way of the way of life about it's a special world we are not we are not true we are we are team that's that's a very very predisensation and well in Antarctic we have the sensation also to be useful that's good it's important I hadn't realized it yet but the reason everybody else was crowding around the open deck was because they had already spotted some of the residents of this area there are 12 species of whales in these Antarctic waters today the humpbacks are showing us

exactly how they got their name as they die for food these whales spend their summers in this region gorging themselves primarily on a small shrimp like crustacean called krill and as winter approaches they travel thousands of miles north to tropical climates where they give birth to their young there are so many here today that it's hard to believe this creature is in danger of extinction sites like these that bring researchers like Dennis Peacock to this continent the Antarctic environment is very rich especially the marine environment and it's special it's different and the kind of things we're looking at here is how is the whole environment connected because of this continent is comparatively free of human exploitation it's an ideal place to conduct environmental research we're hoping to study over something like 10 or 20 years the connection between primary production how the microorganisms in the ocean convert sunlight into material which is then used to feed the higher

animals all the way up the chain to the seals and the penguins that emphasis on long-term ecological research would be a constant theme during my stay at Palmer Research Station which at long last was in sight Palmer is one of more than 40 bases established by international treaty in Antarctica of the three U.S. stations McMurdo is the largest housing more than 1,100 people during the summer months and smack dab on the South Pole is the Amundsen Scott station here astronomers gaze into the clearest atmosphere in the world and of course Palmer where researchers concentrate on studies in marine biology five days after leaving the United States we have finally arrived here at Palmer station on the Antarctic Peninsula feels great to be here right

now I'm standing outside of one of the two main buildings here at the station let's go in and take a look what's going on here operations manager and people's filled me in on what Palmer was all about we we support biology and oceanography predominantly as far as the different scientific disciplines we're in an excellent marine environment with an unbelievable amount of wildlife surrounding the station it's a very good area for those type of studies to be conducted it wasn't long before I was elected to help out with one of those studies so it was back out onto the water this time an inflatable zodiac boat wildlife ecologist Bill Frazier was taking me to a nearby penguin recovery where we would weigh and measure maturing Adele penguins these adolescent birds were about to take the plunge into adulthood by leaving the recovery and swimming out to sea this would be the last chance this year that Bill could measure these penguins a process that has been going on since they were chicks okay they've I'd like you to do helping us out we're going to go

down to a beach it's just below here below this group of penguins and then with these two sticks your job is going to be to just round them up keep them away from the water while we move in and pick out the ones that we need the round up the two holes these birds are two to three months old their baby down is rapidly falling away until recently their parents fed them daily now they must fend for themselves their first dip into the sea is only days away but we're doing is measuring fledging weights what she's sort of the season end event we're catching the chicks just before they go into the ocean and disappear this first trip to sea will last about two years and there are three years of age they will lay their own eggs at this very same recovery if you look around in in these groups you're going to see birds that have bands on them and those are the ones that were after down on the beach okay because those are birds for which we're developing a history right now David you may have to squat a little

bit you know and just keep the sticks open animals here are protected by the Antarctic conservation act in order to get this close to the penguin a special permit is required and only scientists can get it the birds make a lot of fuss the bill assured us the great care is taken not to hurt them or to disturb their area for longer than necessary but it isn't always flattering band numbers 4188 when we measure these what we're doing is measuring what's known as allometric growth weight changes over time and right now they're decreasing and weight but the common length that length of their bill and their flip is not so we're able to judge the relative growth of this population we can tell that this is a healthy bird by its beak and its flipper relative to

its weight if you were just taking weight measurements you may end up with with biased information the information we get today will later be compared to similar measurements taken in past years everything we do is matched season to season to season nothing really means very much on its own it's only when we compare past years they were able to say anything about how this population fits in the sense of nutrition and how have these birds done just from the data that we're getting the numbers that we've done so far which it's only about 30 birds it looks like the chicks are on average heavier this year and they were last year so it's a good sign it's a good sign most of them are fledging with a lot of weight the theory behind this is that survival over winter survival the highest mortality in seabirds tends to occur during the first winter and the fatter the chicks are in better condition they are

the more likely they are to to a return having this extra weight is like having money in the bank while looking for a job it takes time to learn how to find and catch food at sea so the fatter the bird the more time it has to figure things out the reason we have banned birds is that we will be able to these will return to the rookery if they survive so we'll have a history of how much they wade prior to the way I'm going to return yeah I want you to tell you something though thanks but no thank you with the measurements completed we headed back to the station but the work is not over yet feel that and now it's transferred to computer for analysis and the final published results all kinds of transportation mechanisms here at Palmer station starting with

the big boat in the dock there to the zodiac boats all terrain vehicles snowmobiles and in this gadget it's a trolley it's going to get me from here going to park point on the other side of the bay that's where I'm going right now I'm just going to take you a little longer than I thought why don't you go ahead and tour the station without me and I'll catch up later the station has a maximum population of 43 we have two primary buildings the biolab where we are now and this has birthing it houses our dining room kitchen pantry and then labs downstairs for the grantees to conduct their work the other primary building is GWR which stands for garage warehouse and recreation

that also has birthing it has a weight room a small ham shack it also contains our garage our power plant and some supply warehousing area got emergency water storage here for putting fires out two huge tanks for drinking water and let's see a reverse osmosis water purification system there's also a full workshop a massive storage area and a small medical facility a complete physical and dental exam will require before departing for Palmer because although it is a well equipped facility resources are limited this kind of isolation makes the radio room very important how's your weather the weather station at Palmer is constantly monitoring the area's volatile weather conditions before heading out for my afternoon activities

I thought I'd check up on the forecast it's blowing harder than it was this morning yes the local weather can be very unpredictable it can be calm here on station and three miles away you can be blowing 49 the creatures that principal investigator Robin Ross studies are one of the most abundant animals in the world but they're extremely difficult to find they're Antarctic krill a tiny shrimp like animal they may look insignificant but they play a major role in the Antarctic ecosystem it happens to be a dominant organism in the water column that's available as prey for all of the upper-level predators and because it's a dominant it tends to make up 98% of the diet of some of these predators like the big guys like the seals like the seals and the penguins most of the seabirds there's certainly the prime food

source for the whales it turns out that even something like a leopard seal that most people think primarily eats penguins 40% of its diet is krill like the leopard seals we headed out to see in search of krill lay them down with a boat of specialized equipment the first instrument that we used is called the CTD it's a conductivity temperature depth profiler what that means is it gives us a vertical profile of what the salt content and the temperature content is of the water we also use something called a fluorometer and a trans misometer they measure the amount of plant material and the clarity of the water the second instrument we use is an office it's an optical freefall instrument and the office is our way of telling how much light is getting into the water sunlight is an important measurement because it directly affects the growth of microscopic plants called phytoplankton the main food source for krill with the electronics boat we've pinpointed the general area where we

would find a school we've pinpointed the general depth range that we would find the school once they're located we trade in our high-tech boat for a low-check crawler do you think we can find that group of krill again how many krill would be in a group like that well you're you're talking about 20 to 30 thousand animals per cubic meter so it's a lot of krill once we've taken in our catch we get it back to the lab straight into the aquarium what we're doing back in the lab is we're trying to get a sense of what the krill are doing physiologically that is how well are they growing how well have they been feeding are they able to reproduce that season so we do a whole variety of experiments on them in a several different assays that tell us what the krill have been doing I was supposed to determine the sex of these krill the females are the ones that you

see with little red belly buttons have you ever tried to locate the belly button on something four centimeters long they're male it's already for you I'll take care of measuring the eye diameter and the length of the tail then now the reason that we're measuring eye diameter is that that is what we can measure in the penguin diet samples so that's basically all that's left once the penguin has gobbled one of these down that's basically all that's left when you're looking at a penguin diet sample that's in good shape and the size of the eye corresponds to the size of the krill another test helps Robin gauge the crustaceans growth this is an experiment that only lasts four days it uses live animals and it tells us what the growth rates are of the animals in the field from that particular school when combined with environmental data Robin can focus on changes in the population as a whole if I could understand the

reproduction in krill well enough I'm sure I could be able to to predict what would happen as the environment changed there are 43 species of birds that live at least part of the year near this continent the majority like this petrol are seabirds the petrol is very numerous surpassing even some penguin species in sheer numbers the quorum are on some goals fish these waters as well the bird the bill phrasier was after this time was a noisy aggressive relative of the goals the south polar school the nest site is right here and in the process of defending it we're able to net them these birds were definitely not as docile as the baby penguin

and taking the measurements would be complicated by the constant bombardment of its angry mate something you can notice about this bird this is one of the indicator species for the availability of Antarctic silver fish and if you notice this bird has been eating fish to discuss scales fish scales right on the side of the beak tell tale signs tell signs that there's a fish out there as with the penguins we take some basic measurements these flight at birds also were banded because of their global migration range the south polar is a migratory we've gotten returns from as far as Greenland where it's banded here have shown up as far north as Greenland now this bird is ready to be released and what we're going to

too is we're going to try and catch its mate the captive bird now is used as bait to catch its partner both members need to be measured to obtain a complete family chronicle we get a lot of what amounts to life histories individual life histories on every bird that we have right now we're working with about 160 pairs of scoos most of which we know their life histories many are known age birds that were banded many years ago so we have his histories as long as 15 years on some of them that's the one we need yeah they got it we've been after this bird for a month it may have taken a long time to catch this bird the chances are this won't be the last time it finds itself in Bill's net they're very specific same bird always shows up in the same area so it's one of the great things about studying these birds and using them as indicators of the system is that you know year-to-year where to find them and you know that you're dealing year-to-year with the same bird so you eliminate a lot of

variation because researchers have been collecting data yearly for more than 20 years they have detected changes in the environment over time Bill's records show warmer winters are the possible reason that several species of animals have started competing for the same valuable coastal space something that's happening and that we've noted over the years is that the number of elephant seals is increasing drastically here and they're now at the point where they're competing for space with the penguins these seals have made their home right in the center of what was once a very large penguin colony they've displaced all the penguins and actually split up the colonies of three parts now there's no interaction that we can see between the seals no aggressive interaction it's just one of competition for space elephant seals are not the only species of seals that are growing in numbers this is a southern first seal it's one of the species that at least in this area has increased dramatically since the mid-70s in 1974 when Bill's studies

began only six first seals were recorded last year census accounted over 4,000 of the animals what's that pattern telling you we have good weather data good long-term weather data and good good sea ice data over the last two two decades to indicate there is a warming trend occurring here on the Antarctic peninsula in the 1940s four out of every five years saw winters cold enough to freeze the ocean around the peninsula is coastline some species like this leopard seal need the ice for their habitat in the 1980s only one or two out of every five years got that cold as a result the species who need ice cover have decreased in population while those needing open water have flourish the long-term data that we have is providing us with a signal all these species that require different habitats are providing us with a very clear signal that habitat is changing as remote as this continent is from the developed world to the north the consequences of such things as global warming are still very

visible in fact because this is such a pristine environment ecological disruption can be even more apparent now we're able to address issues that really have a global perspective rather than a more local Antarctic perspective although it seems like I just arrived it was already time to depart since winter was approaching many of the residents of Palmer were also saying goodbye for the season since the beginning of human existence individuals have ventured to new frontiers for adventure the pursuit of knowledge the spirit of exploration discovery is the foundation of what modern science is all about and the inspiration for remote research facilities like this Newton's apple is made possible by a grant from three eminence employees

dedicated to innovative thinking and scientific learning three eminion working for you this is PBS you