Martin - Penguin

One afternoon in early 2008 a group of us sat in a rubber dinghy near the tourist ship Marina Sveteava. Fog enshrouded nearby Macquarie Island and enclosed us in a space that included the zodiac, the ship and a lot of King penguins. Dozens of these birds surrounded the zodiac. Black, yellow and white, they swam easily through the water, surfacing beside the rubber pontoons of the craft to peer inquisitively at the people. Then turning, the penguins dived and flew away, colours bright against the sea. It was an extraordinary group in the zodiac. Historians, travellers, scientists, tour guides, all with many trips to Macquarie Island in their experience, most with voyages further south. We were familiar with penguins and the special Macquarie Island welcome. But, once again, we were entranced. Standing on the decks of the ship, observers commented on the childlike smiles and sense of wonderment they saw on our faces. Its an enchanting welcome to one of the worlds most remote places. These penguins entertain and intrigue the human visitor, leaving us bemused, touched by a sense of the familiar and the exotic.

Why such interest in penguins? For some of the answer, we can go back to 1895, when W. H. Bickerton sailed on the brig Gratitude to Macquarie Island, accompanied by a gang of men who were to continue the trade in penguin oil killing penguins and rendering their bodies down for oil. In an article published in the popular Pall Mall Magazine, Bickerton described his contact with the penguins in terms that were then and still remain as standard ways of seeing penguins. Soon after the arrival of the Gratitude, it was surrounded by the birds, who in their anxiety to fathom the mystery of the strange creature who had invaded their territories, lifted themselves almost out of the water. After a short stay on Macquarie Island, Bickerton summed up his impressions of the penguins:

Never while I was on the island with these birds around me did the time drag heavily away, and I cannot feel that this was mainly due to the interest (one almost says companionship) of the penguins... there was something in their grouping... which affected me strangely, and reminded me of knots of men. Perhaps it is the impression of similarity which has led me to write about them more as if they were a nation of people than a mass of multitudinous birds fulfilling natures laws.

There is something about penguins that connects us to them. The writer William L. Fox includes them in the body of charismatic animals that inhabit Antarctica. George Gaylord Simpson, penguin expert and enthusiast, exclaimed that penguins are addictive. Nature writer Diane Ackerman, writing about her experiences of king penguins on South Georgia in the South Atlantic, observed:

There is, ordinarily, a no-mans land between us and wild animals. They fear us and shy away. But penguins are among the very few animals on earth that cross that divide. They seem to regard us as penguins, too... After all, we stand upright, travel in groups, talk all the time, sort of waddle.

Wreck of the Gratitude, Macquarie Island, in 1911. The ship brought sealers, who slaughtered Royal and King Penguins for their oil.

The idea of penguin in human culture is as old as human communities near penguin habitats, or, to be more specific, in the landed sections of penguin habitats, since penguins spend a large proportion of their lives at sea. Indigenous accounts, such as exist, include penguins as small, inoffensive animals, their skins sometimes useful as clothing and ornament and their flesh as food. With stories that date from the twelfth century, at the beginnings of European expansion, the European imagination began to include penguins (or great auks, as we shall see later). Compared to animals with longer human associations, however, the penguin story is relatively new. But the relationships between people and penguins the impact of penguins on human development are much more than early travellers stories. Penguins were first seen as food for European sailors.