Tag Archives: Wildlife

Stanley – nice.

Saturday 9 March 2024­ – One of our guides on Hondius, Martin, once lived in Stanley, and served as a policeman in the Royal Falkland Police Force for a couple of years.  I was looking forward to visiting Stanley even before he gave a lecture about his time there; his talk added more background, describing it as a very close, honest and welcoming community.  We arrived in Stanley at about midday, and that morning Martin, who is also the main birder and photographer among the guides, also gave us a talk about the birds we could expect to see.  Our unusually fine weather stayed with us during the morning, and there were birds around the ship so I could get more practice at photographing them in flight.

Black-browed albatrosses predominated, but (first picture) there was a wandering albatross to photograph, too.

The entrance to Stanley Harbour is through a narrow passage called, imaginatively, The Narrows,

where one catches the first glimpse of Stanley itself.  It takes some navigational skill to get a ship like Hondius through. Our captain managed it, and on the way in we passed a couple of instances which were less successful.

I heard a comment from another of our guides that the Falklands was used in bygone days as an area for dumping ships in order to collect on the insurance; whether that was the case for either of these hulks, I don’t know.

Remaining outside The Narrows was a Viking cruise liner which was too big to go in; we learned later that the windy conditions also meant that its passengers couldn’t go ashore because of the difficulty of navigation of their tenders – they use the ship’s lifeboats, apparently, and previous experience teaches me that it’s very difficult to steer those things with any great accuracy.  One wonders how impressed the passengers were to get this far and not be able to visit; but overall, of course, it played in our favour, since it meant that there were 800 fewer punters wandering the streets of Stanley at the same time as us.

We did, however, pass one other expedition-style ship which had made it in,

and we were soon parked up a short Zodiac ride from the shore.

One could see Tumbledown Hill, the site of one of the final battles in the Falklands War of 1982.

We had a swift lunch on board and then were ferried in so that we could have a look round.

Stanley has a population of around 2,500 (the Falklands Islands overall about 3,50), so you can imagine that that 800 extra punters would have made quite an impact; as it was it was fairly quiet as we walked around.

It’s a nice place.

It helped that the sun shone, something that always makes a place look nicer; and the wind blew as is, we were told, almost always the case. (I had heard, well before we even envisaged going on this trip, that the wind always blows in the Falklands, and I can now vouch for this; I found the constant wind wherever we were to be quite oppressive, actually, although I suppose one might get used to it eventually.)

Immediately we landed, we got to see some of the local bird life.

Kelp gulls, imperial cormorants, rock shags (aka magellanic cormorants)

 

Practically the first thing one passes in wandering along the front is the cathedral, Christ Church, with a very distinctive whalebone arch outside it.

The whalebone arch dates from 1933 and commemorates the centenary of the colony as a British possession.  It remains a British Overseas Territory to this day, despite the efforts of Argentina, who lay claim to Las Islas Malvinas, as they call them.

The bricks to build the cathedral were on a boat which sank on arrival, apparently.  The bricks were retrieved and the cathedral built, but salt water and bricks don’t necessarily go together well, as can be seen in places inside.

It’s a handsome building, outside and inside,

with nice stained glass

and a serious nod to the military history of the islands.

Looking over the water from the front, one can see further evidence of this, in the form of the names, picked out in stones, of naval protection vessels which have served in the Falklands.

Near the cathedral is the supermarket

which also demonstrates the islands’ UK heritage.

Inside, much of the clothing is actually under the F&F label used by Tesco in the UK, and the fresh produce is, as one would expect, very expensive, since it all has to be imported, and not from Argentina.

As I had expected, there were many more reminders of the UK heritage

and the whole place has the air of a well-maintained English seaside town of a few decades ago.


(The mast is from SS Great Britain, Brunel’s boat, by the way)

There are pubs, one of which, the Victory Bar, is a pretty convincing replica of an English pub on the inside

although less so from the outside.

There’s a local newspaper

and a determination to observe British roots.

The Dockyard Museum

is thoroughly worth a visit.  Some exhibits are emphatically drawing, once again, on British roots

while others show that it’s a more exotic location,

with a unique history, which, of course, includes the 1982 war against Argentina.

Ah, yes; the war.

The Falkland Islands have had a disputatious history ever since the uninhabited islands were first discovered in the late 18th Century.  France, Spain, Argentina and Britain have all claimed the islands, but there’s been a British colony here since 1833.

The latest dispute ran from April – June 1982; or March – June 1982 if you include South Georgia.  In March 1982, some 50 Argentinians landed unannounced on South Georgia, ostensibly to collect scrap metal. But on April 2, the same day as Argentina attacked Stanley, Argentine ships sailed into Cumberland Bay (where Grytviken and the HQ of the British Antarctic Survey are, you’ll remember, of course).  By 25 April, the Royal Navy had turned up to South Georgia and their bombardment forced an Argentinian surrender; following that, South Georgia was used as a base to support the British recapture of the Falklands.  Reading about this reminds me that both Canberra (on which I have sailed) and Queen Elizabeth 2 (on which I have not) were pressed into service during the war.

In the museum there’s a short film consisting of narrative from residents who were children during the period describing how it felt from their point of view.  It’s quite moving.  It’s all too easy for us Brits to brag that we gave those Argies a bloody nose; but for the inhabitants at the time it was terrifying, and there’s a feeling that there are still emotional problems among some residents hanging over from those times.

And, of course, there’s a war memorial

with, beside it, a bust of the UK Prime Minister in 1982, Margaret Thatcher.

It’s somewhat ironic that a war which, some say, was started as a vehicle for the Argentinian president, Galtieri, to shore up his public image, ended up as one which did just that for Thatcher.

Anyhoo.

It was pleasant to wander about for a couple of hours, although I was disappointed that the island’s infrastructure was unable to provide any meaningful internet access.  The local provider, Sure, has enabled some hotspots, but only at glacial speeds; even Hondius gives faster access.

Most people know that Stanley is the capital of the Falkland Islands. Perhaps fewer would know that it is on the eastern side of the more easterly of the two major islands in the group: East Falklands and a more western major island, called, yes, you guessed it, West Falklands.  Fewer still, and that number would have included me before this trip, will know that there are some 750 islands in the Falklands, although many of these are smallish bits of uninhabited rock.

What we did know was that, weather permitting, we had two further days to explore some of the lesser islands in the archipelago before we had to head off back to Ushuaia and the end of our trip.  The forecast was – yes, you’ll probably have guessed this, too – windy.  We would find out in due course what this meant for our passage and the possibility of further expeditions.

All At Sea

Thursday 7 & Friday 8 March 2024 – At last!  A break from all this relentless expeditioning, a chance to draw breath, a chance to catch up with writing about what we’ve seen and posting it on…

Ah.

No internet.

Bugger.

This is serious.  If Something Is Not Done, you, my adoring public, will not be up to date with our travels and Jane will lose her Duolingo streak.  One of these is more serious than the other.

The journey from South Georgia to Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands, takes two and a half days in Hondius, a period without any expeditions from the ship. Both Jane and I were ready for this, as were various other passengers we talked to; the preceding days had been not only exceedingly content-rich but also quite tiring, involving much clambering about on and off Zodiacs, some hiking and lots of concentration.

The two days were a great opportunity to attend lectures from our guides, all of whom have scientific backgrounds as well as being able to pilot Zodiacs and identify local wildlife. To be honest, I didn’t attend many, as my main focus was to look through, select and process photos from the active days and then to write up what we’d been doing. It would not be possible to post them online (or indeed to look anything up to fact-check), but I could draft stuff in Word against the time when we would get internet access back.

Despite there being no internet available, we could keep some contact with events in the outside world through the home screen on the TV in our cabin.  As well as giving us information about each day’s programme and what was on the menu for the meals, it provided a summary selection of news stories from around the world.  Whatever selection mechanism was at work was very idiosyncratic; some of the stories were in Dutch, many of them were US-based stories and the selection of sports covered was quite niche.  Every so often, among the important (but tiresome) news items such as Trump v Biden we would get global, stop-press news items like this.

I did attend one lecture, about the circumpolar current, the 30-50km wide band of water that circulates westward (that’s clockwise, if you are looking at the earth with Antarctica in the centre of your picture) at latitudes between 48° and 61° South.  This separates the cold waters in the Southern Ocean (which contains some 40% of the global ocean volume), from the warmer and saltier waters of Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, maintains the extreme Antarctic climate – and captures about 30 times more carbon than the atmosphere.  The Southern Ocean, and the life within it, sequester twice as much carbon as the Amazon rainforest, making it an extremely important for life on earth.  If we bugger it up, human life will become very difficult indeed, and I for one am glad that its importance is becoming more and more obvious and increasingly accepted around the globe.

Other lectures concerned further topics relevant to the southern ocean – biological survival mechanisms in cold temperatures, feeding strategies among the wildlife, details about life cycles of the animals found in this ocean.

One of our guides, Ursula, has been running a project called 121withanimals for many years. She has participated in several research projects and her original background was in arts and crafts.  What she has done is to create, in fabrics, life-sized versions of various animals, including many of those that we’ve seen on our travels so far, and she uses them in education projects, for example to teach children about food chains and to give them an insight into creatures they would otherwise have little idea about. (She had brought several of them with her and occasionally we’d go down the stairs or into the lounge one day to find that another creature had been attached to the walls for us to admire.)

 

Every so often, the lectures would be interrupted by an announcement from the bridge, where someone was perpetually on wildlife lookout duty, about the sighting of various creatures, at which point everyone would rush over to the relevant side of the ship to watch what was going on.  For example, we saw some hourglass dolphins riding along beside the ship

and there were often birds flying around, typically petrels or albatrosses.

So there was plenty to occupy our time and our intellects.

You’ll be able to infer from the wildlife photos above, that the weather conditions were good.  Our extraordinary luck with the weather has continued thus far.  In lieu of video, here are two pictures taken from the after deck showing the extent of the roll we had to deal with.

I, for one, was grateful, as it made it much easier to get decent shots of the wildlife.

The second day, Friday March 8, was important in three regards; firstly, it was the day before we reached the Falkland Islands, and was an opportunity for the guides to help us check over our clothing for biosecurity compliance; secondly, it was International Women’s Day, which gave a chance for Pelin, our history-focused guide, to tell us about the regrettable lack of women in early polar research (for example, three ladies approached Shackleton to join one of his expeditions and he told them baldly that there were no vacancies for women), although this is clearly changing, since most of our guides (also scientists, you remember) are women; and lastly, Pippa and the team had assembled a series of lots for an auction to raise money for the South Georgia Heritage Trust. The ship’s hotel manager, William, helped this last along with a happy hour whilst the auction got under way

and there’s little doubt in my mind that this helped things along, as did the fact that it was an extremely good cause.  The team had done a good job of getting together a great variety of items

as well as some great ideas for unique offerings (publicised on the lounge screens with great humour)

and the whole evening was great fun – and raised several thousand pounds for the Heritage Trust through very generous bidding (see “Happy Hour” earlier).

And so, buoyed up by all this education, fun and the prospect of visiting Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, in weather that might actually not be too bad, we all headed for bed looking forward to getting back to Doing Stuff after all this resting nonsense.

(South) Georgia On My Mind

Sunday 3 March 2024­ – The observant among you will have noticed a lacuna in the updates to these pages.  That’s because nothing of any photographic import happened yesterday. It was a Sea Day as we headed towards South Georgia – in surprisingly calm conditions, bearing in mind that we were adjacent to the Drake Passage and could well have had some unsettled weather as a result.  But we didn’t.  We just had fog,

Even the best efforts of my image processing software couldn’t improve much on the view.

The weather did cheer up to the extent that we could infer the presence of sunshine via a fogbow.

That’s not to say that the day was dull, or content-free. There were some lectures, about the geology of South Georgia and about the whaling industry, which developed from a start around Grytviken on the Island and plundered the seas of a significant proportion of the whale population before humanity came to its collective senses (just about) and banned the practice. Pippa, who gave the lecture, pointed out that at the time, whale oil was as important to the world as fossil fuel oil and gas is to it now; a commodity which it was necessary t exploit.

More importantly, there was a mandatory procedure to go through before we would be free to visit the Island.  It’s a UK Overseas Territory, and has its own governance committee; a passport is essential for all visitors to the area.  More importantly, it has very, very strict rules and controls regarding biosecurity.  The rules are substantially similar to the ones we’d been briefed about for visiting the Antarctic region, but the stakes are higher. A particular concern is that avian flu has been raging across South Georgia since October last year and the importance was impressed on us of not putting anything on the ground, or sitting or lying down anywhere, and keeping at least 5 metres away from wildlife if at all possible. (I wonder, from what we were told, if the situation in some areas of South Georgia might be similar to the Galapagos, where wildlife is so ubiquitous that it’s actually impossible to keep your distance.)

A key part of the briefing was a “Visitors Guide” video, narrated by David Attenborough, which is well worth a watch by anyone, not just those planning to visit.  South Georgia was, at one stage, an environmental disaster area; the strict controls that are in place have actually made it almost unique on the planet in that it is a recovering ecological system.  Our boat will be inspected by officials from the island; the inspection will include a dog team to ensure there are no rodent stowaways and a sample of passengers will also be inspected to ensure their boots and other outerwear are free of any trace of biological material.  To try to ensure that the boat is compliant, a significant part of the day was spent with the staff doing a preliminary inspection of every passenger’s gear to make sure that it was clean and clear. And every cabin has blackout blinds, which must be lowered before dinner to try to ensure that no birds land on the boat.

Thus it was, having steamed all day and much of the night, that Hondius was just off the south-eastern tip of South Georgia, in Cooper Bay.  The scenery was a sharp change from what we’d been accustomed to on the Antarctic Peninsula.

It was green! The centre of South Georgia is covered in glaciers, but tussock grass is very widespread, and it’s this that gives the very different appearance.  The sunshine helped make it a gorgeous day.  Our guide for our first Zodiac cruise, Elizabeth, said that she had never seen weather like it at Cooper Bay; once again, we are very fortunate.

The plan for the day involved two Zodiac cruises.  Landings, though they have been part of previous expeditions, were not possible for us because not permitted – avian influenza means that the landing sites towards the south of the island are off limits.

But we had a great morning, nonetheless.  There were new species of penguins to look for, as well as seals and plenty of bird life.  The scenery generally was outstanding.

It included an area which is known as “the cathedral”, which was spectacular.

The penguin species we were expecting to see most of was macaroni penguins.  The name derives from foppish and elaborate 18th century wigs, following Italian fashion, which in the UK were nicknamed after a familiar type of pasta. (It’s probably why Yankee Doodle called the feather in his hat “macaroni”, by the way). Anyway, the penguins indeed sported a foppish and elaborate hairstyle!

Among the adults were some fledging chicks,

some of which were beginning to grow the punk fringe that marks the species out.

As well as the macaronis, there were numerous king penguins.

More of them later.  Many, many more.

Other wildlife included several fur seals,

and I was able to catch a few photos of the many sorts of bird life in evidence:

giant petrels,

(including one in a white morph

and a sequence of one taking off from the water);

the inevitable shags;

several snowy sheathbills, known, because of their dietary habits, as shit chickens;

a juvenile kelp gull;

an Antarctic tern

 

and – at last! – my stormy petrel on a stick!

It was a great morning, with uniquely lovely weather.  After lunch, we moved around the island, amid a forest of icebergs,

to St. Andrew’s Bay, on the north-east side, where there was a colony of king penguins.  There were lots of them.

Really, lots.

No, seriously, really lots. ‘king loads of them.

There are something like 200,000 nesting pairs in this colony.  That’s 400,000 adults, plus their young and “teenage” chicks.

Really, a lot of penguins.  To the point where I was a bit bored, to be frank.  There are only so many pictures and video one can take of penguins, after all.

One “teenage” chick was very engaging, half way between the brown down he had when born to his adult plumage.

There was other wildlife, of course.  Elephant seals;

skuas;

kelp gulls;

as well as the giant petrels.  The videos I have show that there was quite a lot of sparring between the young fur seals and the penguins on the beach, so there were a few things to distract one, but I felt the Zodiac cruise was about an hour too long.

Back at the boat, the kitchen had organised a barbecue, which was quite fun, if a bit chilly.

The beer and wine were free and the food was very good; but I was quite frozen by this stage so didn’t stay long.

We are undergoing quite an extraordinary period of weather.  Normally, the west coast of the island is battered by winds, and hence seas, which would make it impossible to mount any kind of expedition from the ship.  However, for us tomorrow, the west side offers a better forecast than the east, so the plan is to visit the sites on the western side, in King Haakon Bay: Cape Rosa and Peggotty Bluff, where the sainted Shackleton first made ground on the island in the former before seeking a way, via the latter, to get to the whaling station to seek the help of the men who had told him not to go out in the first place.  Two cruises and a possible landing await.  If the conditions are right…