When can I see penguins and whales on an Antarctic expedition?

The International Whaling Commission describes Southern Hemisphere humpbacks as feeding mainly on krill around Antarctica, with breeding in tropical waters roughly from July to October. That calendar is the whole answer for whales: the months when the animals are absent from Antarctic waters are the months when no ship is sailing there anyway. The IWC's assessment of the species put overall Southern Hemisphere numbers at around 70 percent of the population thought to have existed before hunting began, and the Commission agreed to stop hunting humpbacks from 1963 onward.

Penguins run on a different and much stranger clock. The Australian Antarctic Division's emperor penguin breeding calendar has birds returning in April as the sea ice thickens enough to carry a colony. The female lays a single egg and passes it to the male, who balances it on his feet beneath a fold of skin and incubates for about 65 to 75 days, going without food for roughly 4 months on fat laid down the previous summer. Hatching happens in July. The egg is held near 100°F (38°C) while the air outside can fall below −31°F (−35°C).

By early December the chicks are nearly the size of their parents and feathers are starting to show through the down. Adults that failed to raise a chick begin leaving for the sea to fatten up for their own moult, so colony numbers fall through the month. Through January and February, moulted adults head back out to feed before the cycle restarts. An expedition landing in December therefore meets a colony in its loudest, messiest and most crowded state; one landing in February meets a much emptier one.

Adults weigh 22 to 30 kg — roughly 49 to 66 pounds — at hatching time, while a newly hatched chick weighs just 150 to 200 g and cannot yet hold its own body temperature — which is why the early scenes at a colony are all about transfer and shelter rather than movement, with chicks passed between feet and brood pouches rather than left on the ice.

Approach rules are specific, not general. Resolution X of 2011 tells visitors to keep at least 49 feet (15 m) from fur seals where practicable, and to maintain an appropriate separation from all wildlife. The Australian Antarctic Division adds that feeding, touching and handling of birds and seals is out, that extra care is required during breeding and moulting, that noise must be kept to a minimum, and that taking or harmful interference with Antarctic wildlife is prohibited without a national permit. Those rules set the real viewing distance at a colony, not the lens you brought.

• Early summer — Incubation and hatching are long past by the time ships arrive; what you see instead is a colony provisioning chicks that hatched in July.
• December — Chicks near adult size, feathers appearing, and adults beginning to depart for sea.
• Late summer — Moulted adults returning to the water, and quieter colonies.

Entry to an Antarctic Specially Protected Area requires a permit from your national authority, and some of the most interesting wildlife ground sits inside one; activities in a protected or specially managed area must follow its management plan, and boundaries are worth checking before you sail rather than after. The National Science Foundation also flags that non-grantee tour and scientific groups may need an Antarctic Conservation Act waste permit, particularly for projects involving drones — so aerial filming of a colony is a permitting question, not a camera question. And the 100-passenger cap on people ashore at any one time means your window at a given rookery is a slot in a rotation.

The seasonal question in this chapter sets out the coastal temperature and precipitation figures, and the vessel-size rules that decide whether you land at all.