Headed to the North Pole - but it's hot
Posted: Monday, November 05, 2007 8:01 AM
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On Assignment
By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent - enroute to the North Pole
DAY 2
Onboard the Yamal, 9 a.m.
It’s odd, but we’re headed to the North Pole, and yet I’m sweating.
Why?
Apparently onboard a nuclear powered ship, there’s endless energy, so keeping with what Dmitiry Soloyvov, the Russian cameraman I’m traveling with, says is a typical Russian custom, the ships heaters are on full, and the ship is beyond toasty. Dmitry says, "We Russians don’t like the cold!"
No kidding. It was so hot I woke up several times because I felt so dehydrated.
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| Dmitry Solovyov/ NBC News |
| The bow of the Yamal cuts through summertime ice as it heads towards the North Pole. |
I’m still finding my way around the ship. It’s big (I counted six decks), and so far, the Arctic Ocean is cooperating. Seas are at most three feet: calm by my calculations. A few passengers onboard are feeling seasick, but they’re in the minority.
Why are there no penguins?
There are experts onboard who not only are here to answer questions, but also to give lectures. It might feel like an advanced high school class or maybe a college course except of course, we’re in the environment, and every aspect of what we discuss in the lecture is then in our face.
Why has the arctic ice cap lost an area one and half times the size of Texas in just the last decade or so? Global warming, say scientists.
Today we discussed birds of the Arctic. The one question I had, as apparently do others: Why are there no penguins in the North Pole? Answer: Too many predators – too few places up here for penguins to hide.
In the South Pole, there are natural barriers for penguins to take defense, but here, where there is no land, only ice, penguins just couldn’t survive.
You may already know this, but I did not: the Arctic is water surrounded by land. Antarctica is land surround by water. So, the ability of a penguin to take defensive positions on Antarctica makes sense, doesn’t it?
In the 1930’s, apparently some biologists from Norway tried to transplant penguins. What the polar bears and seals didn’t eat survived several years, but the penguins never reproduced.
One theory: each year, penguins by the millions reproduce together in Antarctica, and here in the Arctic, absent that social experience of group reproduction, the penguins didn’t procreate, thus their numbers dwindled and they eventually died out.
