Last helicopter flight and departure from McMurdo with a C17!

The day before our departure, on November 15th, we did our last flight over the Cape Crozier emperor penguin colony!

Penguins kept moving from the first flight in October 25th to the last flight on November 15th!

First flight!

Last flight!

Our counting is not yet finished, but so far for the Cape Crozier colony, we had for the first flight 1536 penguins, then 1762 penguins for the second flight and 1696 penguins for the third flight! We still have to count the 4th and 5th last flight!

We also get a counting for the other colonies in the Ross Sea!
- 461 penguins for Beaufort Island,
- 19822 penguins for Coulman Island,
- 5221 penguins for Cape Roget.

We still have Cape Washington and Franklin Island to count!

Beautiful landscapes during our last flight, with a lot of emperors and Adélies leaving the colony to feed at-sea through ice holes and cracks more and more frequent late in the season.

We still observed some Adélie penguins attempting to breed in the sea ice despite they can't prevent their eggs to be frozen. They need rocks!

Adélie penguins attempting to nest on sea ice!

We left McMurdo on November 16th, with the very impressive C17! The team was quite tired after this amazing season! More bonus pictures of our fieldwork are coming soon!

View on Mt Erebus, an active volcano!