MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Helicopter flights help preserve penguins. Navy and scientists join in South Georgia research.

Some of South Georgia's 800-thousand King Penguins are in for a surprise in the next few weeks, as helicopters from the Royal Navy's ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance make repeated flights over their colonies.

But it is all in a good cause. It is an experiment being carried out by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to minimise harm and disturbance in future to penguin colonies in South Georgia and the wider expanse of the Antarctic. BAS scientists conducting the research are flying to the Falklands to board HMS Endurance. The ice patrol vessel set sail from the United Kingdom on October 24th for her Antarctic summer season assignments, carrying out hydrographic surveys, compiling navigation charts and supporting the scientists.

The scientists will assess the effect on penguins of a series of helicopter flights at different levels, then draw up guidelines, maps of penguin colonies and diversionary routes to lessen the chances of injury and death as can happen when penguins are frightened into mass panic attacks by aircraft intrusion.

BAS scientists say that as many as four-thousand penguins have in the past been killed in a single incident when vast numbers have rushed for narrow escape routes through tussac grass to the sea, crashing into and climbing over each other, crushing helpless chicks and unhatched eggs.

*The leader of the BAS project, Doctor Richard Stone, and his assistant will spend 120 hours in freezing temperatures, filming what happens when the Endurance's two Lynx helicopters fly over thousands of penguins at heights between 1,600 and 6,500 feet. They will measure noise levels to check how much disturbs the birds. "Helicopters", he says ,"look like giant predators to them, creating fear and agitation which could play havoc with their breeding patterns". The field work will last a month in a project costing £35,000 ( more than 50-thousand dollars).*

Frequent helicopter flights during and after the 1982 Falklands conflict gave rise to stories that low-flying aircraft cause curious penguins to look up to watch their flight and to fall over backwards, allowing the eggs they incubate on their feet to roll away and be snapped up by swooping predator birds such as the Striated Caracara, or Johnny Rook, as it is known. But a BAS environmental expert, Dr John Shears, who is involved in the South Georgia research, dismisses this as an "urban myth" given currency in the Falkland Islands in 1982.