Coastwise club

I went to the library for my weekly club outing and attended a fabulous talk on 'The Frozen Planet'. This talk was given by a BBC photographer who had been contracted to film for a proposed series starting in September. He showed us his arrival in McMerdo bay in Antartica, hosted by the US, the equipment they had to use to drill the hole down through the ice so that they could dive under it. Then followed a series of photos showing what lived under the ice and the brine tunnels that formed down from the icecap. Masses of star fish live off the plancton etc brought down by these brine tunnels until they hit the ocean floor and skid away.

Then he went on to show pictures of the Killer Whales that hunted in Weddell bay, in particular the class B killer whale - identified by its long white eye patch. They only seemed to go after the Weddell seals and had a distinctive way of washing the seals off the ice flows - the pod would swim a distance away and line up, then all charge towards the iceflow and stop dead just before it, causing a huge wave to upend the flow and topple the seal into the water where a designated catcher was waiting. This has only been seen about 5 times in the world but in Weddell Bay it happened quite frequently.

He also showed us a female Humpback whale actually rescuing a seal from the pod by surfacing upside down under the seal as it was toppled, and catching it on her belly then swimming away with it. The photos were truly awesome!

The photographer is now filming in Africa which must have been a huge culture change for him, ice to heat.