In the icy silence of Antarctica, a scene unfolded that no one had ever captured on film before. Hundreds of emperor penguin chicks stood huddled together at the edge of a towering ice cliff, staring down at the cold Southern Ocean below. They were only about five to six months old, still figuring out the rules of survival, and what lay ahead of them wasn’t a gentle slide into the water, but a 50-foot drop.
This unusual moment was filmed in January 2024 at Atka Bay on the Ekström Ice Shelf in West Antarctica. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Bertie Gregory and his team from National Geographic had been living in tents for nearly nine weeks in minus five-degree weather, waiting for something extraordinary.
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Start Learning Today → Kid-Friendly • Parent Approved • Instant AccessThey were there to capture the lives of emperor penguins for a new series called Secrets of the Penguins, which will premiere on Earth Day 2025 on National Geographic and Disney+.
Normally, emperor penguin chicks take their first swim in a much safer way. This rite of passage, known as fledging, usually happens from sea ice that is just a foot or two high. After growing their sleek adult feathers and shedding the fluffy down that keeps them warm on land, they gather at the ice’s edge and hop into the water to start life on their own.
But this group of nearly 700 chicks had grown up on the permanent ice shelf instead of seasonal sea ice, likely because climate change has been melting the sea ice earlier each year. With no gentle slope to guide them into the water, they marched north and found themselves trapped above the ocean by a sheer cliff.
At first, they crowded at the edge like nervous teenagers at the top of a diving platform, leaning forward and peering into the waves. They were hungry. Their parents had already gone to sea, signaling that it was time for the young ones to find food on their own—fish, krill, and squid waiting beneath the ice. But the leap looked terrifying.
Then, one chick made the first move. It launched itself into the air, flapped its wings that were built for swimming rather than flying, and fell into the sea below with a splash. To everyone’s relief, it surfaced quickly and swam away as if saying, “I can do this.”
That single act set off a chain reaction. Soon dozens, then hundreds, were diving off the cliff one after another, tumbling, flipping, and splashing into the freezing ocean.
Gregory, who had launched a drone to follow them, could hardly believe what he was seeing.
“They were falling and there were big chunks of ice floating in the water beneath them, so it’s like falling onto a chunk of concrete. But, to my amazement, they were not just surviving, but popping up and going, ‘I can swim!’”
he explained.
For scientists, this was a moment of both awe and concern. Gerald Kooyman, a penguin researcher who studied the birds for over five decades, had only seen something like this once before, more than 30 years ago. In that event, nearly 2,000 chicks were forced to leap off a 20-meter cliff after wandering onto an iceberg.
Most survived, but the sight was rare enough that it became part of his book Journeys with Emperors. Now, with cameras rolling, history repeated itself—except this time the world could see it.
Experts say this behavior may become more common. Traditionally, emperor penguins breed on sea ice that forms in winter and breaks apart in spring. But as Antarctica warms and the ice disappears earlier each year, some colonies have begun nesting on the thicker ice shelves that stay attached to the land.
This forces the young penguins into dangerous situations when it’s time to reach the ocean.
“We estimate that we could lose the whole population by the end of the century if climate change continues on its current path,”
warns Peter Fretwell of the British Antarctic Survey.
The global population of emperor penguins, about half a million, is already listed as near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Still, conservation biologist Michelle LaRue sees resilience in these birds. She calls the cliff dive a reminder of their toughness.
“They’re incredibly resilient. They have been around for millions of years; they’ve seen lots of different changes in their environment. It’s a question of how rapidly they’re able to deal with the changes that are happening—and how far they can be pushed.”
conservation biologist Michelle LaRue said.
For Gregory and his team, the moment was unforgettable. After two months of camping alongside a colony of about 10,000 penguins, surrounded by noise, smell, and the constant bustle of life, they had stumbled upon something the world had never witnessed on camera before.
“The thing that gets my blood racing the most is the idea that if we just keep going around the next corner, we might get to see something no one has ever seen before,”
Gregory said.
And on that frozen day at Atka Bay, he did. A colony of young emperor penguins proved that survival sometimes takes a leap of faith—50 feet straight down into the unknown.
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