Tag Archives: Wildlife

All At Sea

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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

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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…

The Scenic South Orkneys

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Friday 1 March 2024­ – In following Shackleton’s route, i.e. heading towards South Georgia, the benign conditions and lack of icebergs in the way had enabled the skipper to make sufficiently good progress that Pippa could plan an extra stop, rather than just blatting our way directly to South Georgia.  So we found ourselves at Shingle Cove, which is on Coronation Island, part of the South Orkneys.  In sunshine! And light winds!!

The sunshine made the scenery quite spectacular.

 

But equally, we could see that we were in Iceberg Alley, so once again the captain had done a good job of not bumping into anything.

This meant we could undertake a brief expedition from Hondius. The specifics of the timing meant a slightly unusual sequence of events – Blue Group went before lunch and Orange Group after – but it was nice to get off the ship in light winds and sunshine.

The landing area was, unsurprisingly, a shingle beach, or at least a beach with small stones on it rather than inconveniently large boulders. Right by where we climbed out of the Zodiacs were several elephant seals, one of which, although not a full-grown adult, was quite huge.

You can see that his size dwarfs the other seals on the same stretch of beach.  You could tell he wasn’t full grown because his nose hadn’t grown out into the elephantine proboscis that marks out adult elephant seals; but you can see it starting to develop.

Even if he wasn’t fully grown, he was nonetheless an impressive sight.

Eventually he got fed up with people staring at him and lumbered off to face away from us, looking like nothing so much as a grumpy Vogon.  Well, all Vogons are grumpy, so I suppose that’s a bit tautological.

The views from the island continued to be spectacular.

but there were other things to be seen apart from just the view. Turning one way led us to a glacier that was unusual in that it debouched on to land rather than the sea.

And heading the other way led to what was once a colony of penguins.  Since all the chicks had fledged, there were actually very few penguins left

and the main inhabitants of the island were seals, mainly elephant but with a leavening of fur seals.

There was somewhat gruesome evidence of the demise of many penguins

but we weren’t sure whether these had been predated or had just expired.  There were skuas around

and these are sufficiently nasty pieces of work that they might p-pick a p-penguin if they felt p-peckish.

The rocks that lay around on the walk were very colourful in places

and the paths that the landing party had marked out for us with red poles led past rocks decorated with moss and a striking orange lichen

that we were enjoined to be careful not to walk on, as it is fragile and takes centuries to grow.  And all the way along our walks there were more seals, all of whom were evidently conserving energy, since they moved not a muscle as we went by.

One of the main reasons for their lack of movement was that they are moulting.  Like penguins, these seals undergo what’s called a “catastrophic moult”.  Here’s a good example.

During the moult, they cannot go into the water to feed, so conserving energy is an important tactic.

Apart from the bit where I fell over, slightly damaging both my camera and my wife in the same moment of clumsiness*, the expedition was a delight, partly because of the scenery and partly because of the sunshine.  We headed back to Hondius, which eventually set off in the general direction of South Georgia, passing south of the South Orkneys and providing the passengers with views of blowing whales and some more wonderful scenery.

There were many vast icebergs, as big as apartment blocks.

 

There were also a handful of fishing vessels nearby

which we reckon were probably fishing for krill.  Whilst this is not illegal, there are supposed to be quotas for krill fishing; but there’s no policing mechanism, and there is a significant danger (and some evidence) of krill overfishing.  Although these small shrimp-like creatures are astonishingly plentiful, the human appetite for them for purposes that are unnecessary – omega-3 supplements, skin care products, dog food (!) and, most irritatingly of all, food that will turn farmed salmon a more marketable shade of pink – is not only endangering the food chain, since practically everything is utterly dependent upon krill, but also contributing to climate change, since Antarctic krill (if left to themselves) sequester more carbon from the atmosphere than the Amazon rain forests.  This is a sobering message, and one hopes that people will come to understand the seriousness of the situation and start changing purchasing decisions away from products which use krill or krill oil.

One can but hope that matters will improve.  Indeed, the way the Antarctic has been internationally recognised as an important part of the planet is evidenced by the international Antarctic treaty, originally signed up to by 12 member countries and now involving some 27, either as claiming some territorial rights or wishing to enter the area for research purposes.  The conditions of the treaty lay down strict rules about what may and may not be done in the region. It’s heartening to know that countries, even ones which traditionally compete such as USA and Russia, can work together for some kind of common good.  As we head for South Georgia, leave the Antarctic and cross the 60th parallel heading north, I feel better educated about the critical importance of this region, with even a glimmer of hope that the human race might not, for once, fuck something up.

 

 

* Not too seriously, thank goodness.  However, my wife will repair herself, but the camera, whilst still capable of taking pictures, is going to need a visit to a service centre.