More great questions keep coming from students.  Keep it up!!!

Students in Ms. Pagoota’s 2nd grade class at Sherrills Ford Elementary asked:

How close is Palmer Station to the ocean? What is the shoreline like?

As you can see in the picture above, Palmer Station is surrounded by water.  We are on an island (Anvers Island).  The station buildings themselves have water on 3 sides, and on the 4th side there is a glacier (a massive mountain of ice and snow).  The coastline is mostly big rocks.  In some places, the glacier covers the coastline and runs into the water.  Sometimes big pieces of the glacier fall off into the water and make a huge cracking noise that sounds like lightning.  We are not supposed to take our research boats close to the glacier in case this happens.

How many types of animals do you see each day?

Because we are so close to the water, we see all kinds of animals.  Today I’ll just talk about the ones that spend some time on land…there are MANY more that live underwater, like fish, amphipods, and sea stars, that we bring up in traps and nets each day to study.  I’ll talk about them in a few days.

Probably the most common animals we see are birds, including gulls, terns, and penguins.  There are 3 species of penguin we commonly see: Adelie, Chinstrap, and Gentoo.  Above are pictures of them.  Can you tell them apart?  What is similar about them?  What is different?  Why?

We also commonly see three species of seals: crabeater, leopard, and elephant.  Other marine mammals that are commonly seen are minke whales and humpback whales.

Antarctica does not have many animals that live all the time on land.  The few animals that just live on land are insects.  In fact, a group of scientists working at Palmer Station is studying the “largest land animal in the  Antarctic” which is a tiny bug!

Keep the questions coming!!