Photographer Zehnder Dies While Trying To Film Antarctica Penguins

SYDNEY, Australia - Award-winning photographer Bruno Zehnder died of "heart failure and supercooling" during an Antarctic storm while trying to film Emperor penguins incubating their eggs, officials said today.

Mr. Zehnder, a U.S. citizen and New York resident who was born in Switzerland, had been working from Russia's Mirny base on his third photojournalism trip with the Russian Antarctic program, officials said.

In 1996, Mr. Zehnder won first prize in the U.S. picture of the year competition for magazine photography as a free-lancer in the science-natural history category. His Antarctic photographs, particularly of penguins, were acclaimed.

Russian officials at Mirny base, on the coast of the south Indian Ocean, said Mr. Zehnder left Mirny base July 7, heading to the nearby Emperor penguin colony, but late in the day a storm closed in. When he failed to return, search teams were sent out.

His body was found after a 42-hour search. Doctors at Mirny determined that Mr. Zehnder died of "acute heart failure and supercooling," the Russian report said.

The report did not give his age.

This was Mr. Zehnder's third Antarctic trip as a guest of the Russian program, pursuing his photographic and video studies of Emperor penguins. He had previously worked aboard the research ship Akademik Fedorov in 1987-88, and stayed at Mirny base in 1994.

Emperor penguins, the tallest member of the penguin family, are the only animals to raise their young on land in the icy depths of the Antarctic winter.