Kenn Borek, the Penguin, and the Seismometer

[lawrenceloft]

I am trying to track down details of a specific event in Antarctica where a pair of Kenn Borek pilots accidentally hit a penguin with their plane, took it on board, ditched it over the continent, and set off seismometers prompting a multimillion dollar investigation into supposed penguin migrations.

I am looking for anyone who was working there at the time, I believe over a decade ago, to let me know what they heard. I have heard this from two former pilots and one former mechanic, but no one who knew more than the scuttlebutt version.

Specifically I would like dates and locations if possible. This is for my own personal satisfaction, so please don't out the guys responsible.

[olivierw]

Hey,

It sounds like you're mixing up multiple stories and companies.

Story 1) Bored Borek pilots allegedly lit up a drum of Jet-B and kicked it out the plane. It exploded and triggered seismometers from Dew Line sites (now called North Warning System), where they thought a bomb had gone off in the high Arctic. No idea about the dates, the location or the pilots.

Story 2) I don't really want to give too much details but this was a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) pilot who found a dead penguin (he didn't hit it) that had frozen in a funny position. It looked like the penguin froze doing a military salute. The pilot thought that was hilarious, so he took the penguin on board. He placed it in the left seat of the Twin Otter and flew from the right seat (BAS is a single pilot operation). He flew back to base, but on his way he had to pass near a deep field camp. So he did a bunch of low passes around the camp and it looked like the penguin was flying and giving military salutes to everyone on the ground.

Everyone had a good laugh until the pilot realized that by displacing a dead penguin without authorization, he was in violation of some pretty serious Antarctic regulations. So he got worried and decided to dump the penguin overboard (or maybe heanded and dropped it off, I can't recall).

So he dumped the penguin somewhere over the Antarctic plateau. Now I'm gonna assume you don't know much about Antarctica and I'll give you a quick geography lesson.

Antarctica is mostly just ice. Very thick ice. A lot of it. At some points the ice can be as much as 4km thick, this is called the Antarctic plateau, it's about as big as the continental US. Because of how thick the ice is, it has a high elevation (7,000 to 14,000ft I think), which makes the area extremely cold, I don't expect I have to explain that to a pilot. It's also, for the most part, south of the Antarctic circle, meaning the sun doesn't set every day. Lastly, it's far from any source of water as the ocean is hundreds of km's away. As a result this area is completely desolate of any life. On the other hand, you have the coastal regions of Antarctica where the climate is less violent and that's where you find penguins and most of the Antarctic fauna.

So that dead penguin is now way inland on the Antarctic plateau. Everything is fine... Until a couple years later when a team of glacierologists decides to go study the random glacier where the penguin was dumped. They find this dead penguin and they start to really wonder how it got there. Logically they assume that penguins are capable of great inland migrations and this triggered a whole big deal where they tried to study the migration patterns of penguins. I believe it even made the papers.

This happened I think in the early 2000s. I've heard this story from a guy who was at the camp where the pilot did the fly-by, and I've also heard it from the pilot himself (I thought I was gonna break a rib when he told me ). But yeah it's second hand info and I wouldn't be able to tell you much more.

[albertdesalvo]

Great story, thanks for posting.

[lawrenceloft]

Hey,

It sounds like you're mixing up multiple stories and companies.

Story 1) Bored Borek pilots allegedly lit up a drum of Jet-B and kicked it out the plane. It exploded and triggered seismometers from Dew Line sites (now called North Warning System), where they thought a bomb had gone off in the high Arctic. No idea about the dates, the location or the pilots.

Story 2) I don't really want to give too much details but this was a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) pilot who found a dead penguin (he didn't hit it) that had frozen in a funny position. It looked like the penguin froze doing a military salute. The pilot thought that was hilarious, so he took the penguin on board. He placed it in the left seat of the Twin Otter and flew from the right seat (BAS is a single pilot operation). He flew back to base, but on his way he had to pass near a deep field camp. So he did a bunch of low passes around the camp and it looked like the penguin was flying and giving military salutes to everyone on the ground.

Everyone had a good laugh until the pilot realized that by displacing a dead penguin without authorization, he was in violation of some pretty serious Antarctic regulations. So he got worried and decided to dump the penguin overboard (or maybe heanded and dropped it off, I can't recall).

So he dumped the penguin somewhere over the Antarctic plateau. Now I'm gonna assume you don't know much about Antarctica and I'll give you a quick geography lesson.

Antarctica is mostly just ice. Very thick ice. A lot of it. At some points the ice can be as much as 4km thick, this is called the Antarctic plateau, it's about as big as the continental US. Because of how thick the ice is, it has a high elevation (7,000 to 14,000ft I think), which makes the area extremely cold, I don't expect I have to explain that to a pilot. It's also, for the most part, south of the Antarctic circle, meaning the sun doesn't set every day. Lastly, it's far from any source of water as the ocean is hundreds of km's away. As a result this area is completely desolate of any life. On the other hand, you have the coastal regions of Antarctica where the climate is less violent and that's where you find penguins and most of the Antarctic fauna.

So that dead penguin is now way inland on the Antarctic plateau. Everything is fine... Until a couple years later when a team of glacierologists decides to go study the random glacier where the penguin was dumped. They find this dead penguin and they start to really wonder how it got there. Logically they assume that penguins are capable of great inland migrations and this triggered a whole big deal where they tried to study the migration patterns of penguins. I believe it even made the papers.

This happened I think in the early 2000s. I've heard this story from a guy who was at the camp where the pilot did the fly-by, and I've also heard it from the pilot himself (I thought I was gonna break a rib when he told me ). But yeah it's second hand info and I wouldn't be able to tell you much more.

This is exactly what I was looking for!