tied to home | 97travelling speed on these trips was close to 4 km/h, around the speed of
an Olympic swimmer. Another Falklands study confirmed that males
made long trips but discovered that females were much more likely to
make short trips, and indeed not even stay at sea overnight (which,
arguably, shows good sense). Katrin Ludynia of Germany’s Max Planck
Institute for Ornithology thought the difference might be due to the
fact that males needed to build body reserves during incubation so as
to be fat and fit to guard the newly-hatched chick. In contrast females
had less need to build up reserves since their role of collecting food for
and feeding the small chick also allowed them to feed themselves at this
stage.^16 Here then is an example of the different responsibilities of the
two sexes being reflected in different seagoing journeys.
I cannot resist pursuing that theme and ending this section by re-
counting what modern studies have revealed of the travels of the off-
duty Emperor Penguin, the female. Remember that the female lays her
single egg onto her down- turned tail in June at the start of winter. Then,
anxiously, she transfers it onto the feet of her mate who tucks the valu-
able cargo under a cosy fold, and prepares for the winter ordeal. He
huddles up to his fellow males and endures the worst of the Antarctic
winter. Apsley Cherry- Garrard entitled his 1922 book from the heroic
age of Antarctic exploration The Worst Journey in the World. Although his
journey to collect an Emperor Penguin egg was a hell of frigid endur-
ance, it was no worse than the winter conditions, down to –40°C, that
the male Emperors routinely withstand while their mates are away at
sea. The females only return when the chick is due to hatch some 64 days
after laying. But where do they go during this two-month break?
Fitted with satellite transmitters or time- depth recorders by Roger
Kirkwood and Graham Robertson, female Emperor Penguins left the
colony on the coast of the Australian sector of Antarctica.^17 They first
walked and tobogganed for 80 km across the fast ice to reach open water.
The better part of two months was then spent in polynyas, more or less
permanent openings in the sea ice, within 100 km of the colony. Here
the birds hunted food in water 200– 500 m deep, over the outer conti-
nental shelf or shelf slope where the seafloor begins its descent to the
deep- ocean abyss. Occasionally, when in transit and when on the ice