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| Penguin about to take the plunge. |
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| The island is populated with Gentoo penguins. |
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| Ice for scale. |
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| Like much of the peninsula at this latitude and time of the year, the island was rocky at the coast with an icy middle. |
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| A bird caught in flight. Probably an albatross but don't quote me on that. |
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| The penguins tended to distribute themselves evenly across the landscape. |
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| A wider view of the coast. |
Pléneau Island was named by Charcot after his expedition photographer, Paul Pléneau. This was part of the French Antarctic Expedition between 1903 and 1905. It is home to a lot of Gentoo penguins, which makes this a suitable time to talk about one of the other rules of the expedition. You must, wherever possible, not get closer than 5m to the penguins.
There are two reasons for this rule. The primary is avian flu. This had unfortunately reached the peninsula by the time of our cruise and there was a great deal of concern over its spread. Nobody wanted a bunch of tourists to be vectors. In fact there were scientists on the expedition who were monitoring its spread. The cooperation between tourism and science in the region is one of the ways the Antarctic tourism industry can at least tip its hat in the direction of sustainability, although the cynic in me does wonder about the balance of this arrangement.
The second reason is that the penguins don't want to be bothered. It's true that they appear unconcerned by their human visitors, but measurements of their heart rates in such situations show that they're anxious even though they don't show outward signs of stress. Look, I'll get back to anthropomorphising them in ways that make serious ornithologists frown soon enough. But facts are facts, and the world is a stressful enough place already without adding a load of stressed-out penguins to it.
There are limits to this 5m rule of course. You should only retreat if it's safe to do so and I've already filled up one crevasse with doomed tourists in the blog. It's not something I want to make a habit of.
There is also a flaw in the rule, which is that nobody has explained it to the penguins. They are often rushing around on their very important penguin business and if you're in the way then there's a good chance they'll simply go around you. This in itself isn't necessarily a problem as even a rushing penguin isn't particularly fast so you can get out of their way. It does however become a problem when extended to three or more penguins, at which point you can quickly find yourself surrounded by the mathematical impossibility of being further than 5m from a penguin. At this point it's best to head for whichever direction has the least penguins in and hope they sort themselves out.
While the penguins are being penguins, we are only human and sometimes also got so caught up in things that we didn't always notice penguins getting ever closer. This was especially true when taking photos. In these cases our ever-patient crew of polar guides would politely remind us of the rule. They had it doubly hard, having to keep an eye on both the wandering penguins and the wandering tourists.
I've mentioned the penguins going about their important penguin business a few times, but what is that business? Chiefly it's feeding their chicks. During the time of season we were there, the chicks were mostly at the awkward adolescent stage where they were almost fully grown but didn't have their adult feathers yet so couldn't go in the sea. As such they were still reliant on their parents for food. I don't know how penguins schedule their time but to the casual observer it looks a lot like they stand around a lot then very urgently have to get to the sea. Doing so over the course of the season wears desire lines in the ice between the rookery and the sea. These grooves are known colloquially as penguin highways and they are one of the most common places where the 5m rule needs invoking. The highways typically run downhill with scant regard to gradient, whereas we were more concerned with gravity, especially when failing to be careful would leave us caked in penguin guano. And so it was common to be crossing a penguin highway while a penguin was hurtling down it as fast as its little legs would go. At that point I would stop to let the penguin pass. More often than not the penguin would also stop and stare at me.
"After you," I would say.
The penguin, being a penguin, would continue to stare at me.
I would indicate its right of way with a wave of my hands, as though I were helpfully letting someone across the road at a quiet junction. The penguin of course knows nothing of roads and right of way so it would carry on looking at me with an expression somewhere between mild apprehension and boredom.
It's best to back off or dash across at this point. It's the penguin's highway and I don't entirely understand their rules.
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