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Ballard looking out onto open water with binoculars.

Ballard looking out onto open water with binoculars.
Ballard looking out onto open water with binoculars.
Ballard looking out onto open water with binoculars.
Ballard looking out onto open water with binoculars.
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131793
Linder, Christopher L.
Ballard looking out onto open water with binoculars.
Still Image
12/24/2007
graphics/pd3-1/cl_20071224_antarctica07_penguinscience_187.jpg
Ballard scans the open water for orcas and minke whales - part of the researchers' daily routine. They're hoping to learn how the arrival of whales in midsummer affects the food penguins eat. Minke whales catch huge amounts of krill in their baleen-lined mouths, while orcas (killer whales) eat silverfish and toothfish, an increasingly rare species commonly called Chilean seabass. Over the 12 years of this project, Ainley and Ballard have noticed that penguins seem to switch from krill to silverfish about the time whales arrive. They think that the minke whales eat most of the region's krill and scare the rest into deeper waters out of the penguins' reach. For the time being, the Ross Sea is the perfect place to study this complex relationship, Ainley said, as it's the world's last remaining undisturbed coastal ecosystem. Even that may be changing, though: Japanese whalers caught 1,000 of the estimated 15,000 minke whales in the Ross Sea sector last year, and each year fishing boats appear on the horizon, looking for toothfish.
Image of the Day caption:
Grant Ballard of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory scans the open water off Cape Crozier during a 2007 expedition to Antarctica to study Adélie penguins and effects of climate change on the region. The research team also included WHOI geologists who were trying to piece together a much older puzzle: How long has the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet been frozen in place?
Photo by Chris Linder
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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