Thursday we were on the helicopter schedule for a flight originating in McMurdo Station to Cape Bird for terrestrial sample collection. These samples are intended to provide an estimate of backround concentrations to compare to sample concentrations from samples collected at McMurdo. The first photo shows Cape Bird from the air, the second the helicopter that flew us to Cape Bird.

CapeBird Descent

CapeBird

We were allocated 5 hours of ground time and hiked up to a remote area (the area was located in the upper right hand of the next photo) and collected 16 samples using a random sampling scheme. We finished our sampling a little early and used the time to visit two New Zealand penguin researchers at the nearby rookery. The penguin colony at Cape Bird was not as large as in previous years. The area around Cape Bird is usually free of ice at the time of year that we visited it, but this year the ice edge is still many kilometers from Cape Bird. The following photos are of some of the Cape Bird adelie penguins.
.