BBC Wildlife December 2019SEVEN WORLDS | ONE PLANET
1 Standoff:leopard
sealshuntpenguins
asthebirdsleavethe
safetyoftheiceto
reachopensea.
2 A grey-headed
albatrossatopits
chick.Vastnumbers
ofbirdsandmammals
gatheronSouth
Georgiaislandtobreed.
3 Thesouthernright
whalepopulationhas
growntoover2,000
individualssince
theirprotection.(^12)
3
the breathing holes freeze over. The
Weddell seal, not surprisingly, is
the seal with the shortest lifespan.
Life in the Antarctic either
embraces ice – like the snow
petrels and Weddell seals – or
avoids it, by living more to the
north, on and around subantarctic
islands, as elephant seals, king
penguins and albatrosses do.
The price they pay, however, is
that they are not alone. They must
compete for food and living space
with millions of others.
The Seven Worlds Antarctic team
headed for South Georgia, home to
elephant seals and king penguins. For
wildlife cameraman Mark MacEwen,
the first sight of the island was
beyond anything he’d dreamed.
“St Andrew’s Bay is an amazing
amphitheatre with a huge crescent of
beach backed by jutting mountains.
As you drop anchor just offshore, the
sound of what amounts to a wildlife
chorus hits you. There are the deep
bass guttural calls of the bull elephant
seals, which reverberate across the
floor covered by colourful starfish,
brittlestars, feather stars, sea urchins,
sea cucumbers, cup corals and sea
anemones, a far cry from the black-
and-white world at the surface.
Some animals have grown into
giants, like the sea spiders with a
leg span of 14cm, and, while the
crew were there, they witnessed
something unusual. A jellyfish’s
stinging tentacle had made contact
with a sea anemone, and began to
reel it in. What it hadn’t realised is
that the anemone was attached to the
bottom, and it was actually reeling
itself towards a sticky end!
Cold, hard choices
In amongst the sea-ice lives the
Weddell seal, which occurs the farthest
south of any mammal. It can only
survive amongst the ice by creating
several breathing holes that it keeps
open by scraping the ice with its
teeth. When its teeth wear down, it
either starves, because it cannot
catch fish, or it drowns because