Filmed for the very first time by Bertie Gregory and the Talesmith crew for National Geographic, emperor penguin chicks leap off a 50-foot ice cliff to take their first swim!

When the chicks are around five months old, they leave the colony and travel to the sea, normally entering the water from a height of about one to two feet off the sea ice. However, since the advent of high-res satellite imagery, scientists have been aware that some emperor colonies were breeding and raising their chicks high up on the more permanent ice shelves. But it’s never been confirmed just how these colonies descended the precipitous ice shelves—until now.

"We’d seen multiple groups of chicks walking out in this direction, but due to the undulating, icy terrain and a dangerous crevasse field, we were unable to follow them on snowmobile or on foot. They would simply disappear over the horizon. It wasn’t until I launched a drone that I was able to keep them in view and see the enormous cliff they were walking toward. As soon as I realized they were going near to the edge, I used the drone’s powerful zoom lens to maintain a very large distance from downwind. I wanted to be 100 percent sure I had no influence on their behaviour. After several batteries and a couple of hours waiting, I watched a single chick walk up to the edge and launch itself off. Once the first had jumped and landed unscathed in the freezing Southern Ocean, many soon followed, and I was able to nudge in close enough to capture the scene.”

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