Bird Island

We did some base relief, honest (food and new batteries for the power supply in, waste and empty oil drums out). Then we went for some walks and took some photos. Amazing place:

Thankfully it didn't eat the ship

The corollary of so much life is a rather large amount of death. In the summer this beach is packed full of Fur Seals.

A warm seat. Not many pups survived this year due to a lack of food in surrounding waters, possibly linked to the very high temperatures this year.

Other people working, moving waste into the cargo tender to be taken back to the ship.

Death in action: a Sheathbill pecking at an open wound on a soon-to-be-ex Gentoo Penguin. Being a science base, there is no intervention to help or save the animals (there are tens of thousands of penguins and 10 scientists max, 4-5 in winter so it would be impracticable as well as messing up the science)

Anti-seal fence. Fur Seals are excluded from a small area to study their effects on the tussock grass. Antarctic Fur Seal numbers have rocketed from low thousands (maybe hundreds) globally (due to incredibly thoughtless and unsustainable hunting) to approximately two million around South Georgia now. Being Fur Seals theys are far more competent on land than 'true' seals so can climb high up the island, trashing the tussock and destroying breeding habitat for burrowing petrels as they go. It isn't clear whether the current population is back to 'normal' and the lack of damage was a positive side-effect of the hunting or whether the removal of huge numbers of baleen whales (competitors for food), also by thoughtless and unsustainable hunting, has allowed numbers to overshoot. The extremely low numbers that they reached may also have made predators (mainly seal-specialist Killer Whales) die out, move away or reach very low numbers from which they haven't increased as rapidly as the furries. Many scientists would like there to be fewer, due to the damage and the fact that they try to bite you while you do base relief.

Wandering Albatross brooding its chick with the base behind.

Wandering Albatross chick, ready for the winter (hopefully)

Some adults were still brooding the chicks while others were left as both adults foraged.

Black-browed Albatross chick almost ready to fledge - the smaller albatrosses raise chicks within one summer so are out of synch with the Wanderers.

Not quite ready for sea. Note that all these photos were taken with a short lens (this one at 85mm, the top end of the zoom)

The endemic South Georgia Little Brown Job (Pipit). Mostly restricted to rat-free islands around South Georgia.

I have mentioned the death haven't I?

Yves at 'Big Mac' - the large Macaroni Penguin colony. Breeding is over but many birds are still around moulting or mooching.

I wish I could fly...
I just wish I could swim! Penguins have to come ashore to moult as they lose their waterproofing and insulation. They obviously have to fast through this period.

Skuas playing king of the castle, waiting for another penguin to die.

Displaying Wanderers. They return to colony at about 7 years old and display for a few years before breeding with a lifelong (normally, they do 'divorce') partner. They live to 50+ so there is no rush, unless huge numbers die on long-lines trying to catch fish, which they currently are - see http://www.savethealbatross.net/ but there are recent encouraging results significantly reducing the bycatch around South Georgia and South Africa.

Cute, just stay away from the bill!

Less cute - Southern Giant Petrel chick.

Overall an amazing day with amazing sights and sounds - being on the ship you hear very little bird noises (engine, forced air ventilation, music and each other is about it) so hearing them call is very pleasant. You can also hear the air over the Wanderers' wings from about 50 yards as they come into land (the wingspan is about 10ft). Walking was also a novel experience but I just about managed to keep up with the guys from base over/between the tussock and around the Fur Seals (dead and alive).

Past South Georgia and onto Polar Front

Icebergs again, plenty around South Georgia after few in the open water north of South Orkneys

Now tied up at Fipass in the Falklands so will catch up with the happening of the last couple of weeks (or at least the more photogenic aspects - I'll spare you the physics cruise report, which is possibly the dullest piece of writing I'll ever produce. We got to the Georgia Basin, the site of the South Georgia bloom (fertilised by iron coming from the island and/or shallow shelf around the island) and the end of our transect - a line north-east(ish) from South Orkneys to west of South Georgia. The aim of the transect was to sample different environments along the way - from ice and Antarctic Peninsula influenced water to the south, through 'open water' (low iron as not downstream of land) and into warmer and South Georgia influenced water to the north. This year has been very warm - 1.5 degrees Celcius warmer than the same time last year. Not sure yet why it is so different but will be an opportunity to see what effects the temperature has (but also cause some problems comparing between this autumn and the summer cruise last year).

After two stations in the bloom we set off for the Polar Front to see why King Penguins go there, swimming for several days through areas with seemingly higher productivity (plant growth). The Polar Front is a transition zone between Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic water masses, a region of strong currents and also an important habitat zone in its own right. Most people define it as a single line rather than a two-dimensional area so I was hoping to use finding the King Penguins and Grey-headed Albatrosses all lined up to identify the front! As it was we had to rely on my satellite work and a series of eXpendable BathyThermographs (XBTs) to get us to a suitable bit of the Polar Front. We had to hove to and do nothing the first night as there was too much swell - we have to deploy the nets at night or otherwise the fish see it coming and swim away. However, in a break with the past couple of years we could work the next couple of nights, getting three net hauls done per night and hopefully some interesting insight into the myctophid fish (penguin food) of the area. Then it got rough again - force 10 for a day. We managed to run slightly across the wind and tack back to South Georgia to do the Bird Island base relief call (pick up summerers, give food and other supplies to the winterers). See next post.

Windy, but it got windier. Force 9-10 winds aren't too bad - not dangerous and you know you're not going to work for a bit so can relax for a bit and watch some films.

What you get for steaming across the swell.

One of these happened to fly past - young (3years?) Wandering Albatross. They stay at sea until they are seven, then attend the colony and display for a few years and start breeding at 10-12.

Black-browed Albatross

Very co-operative (well, inquisitive actually) bird early yesterday morning starting flying laps of the ship, clearly looking down at us to see what we were doing and whether we might be a source of fish. Not a massive amount of light but that's not necessarily a bad thing with albatrosses as the black and white contrast makes getting the correct exposure difficult in strong light. Photos taken from the monkey island (deck above the bridge).

More photos

Dawn
Trawl catches - from between 1000 and 700m deep. Animals in this region get their energy from material falling from the surface layers where there is a enough light for plant growth (top 20-100m).

Kerguelen Petrel - not seen last trip but common in the area in autumn after dispersing from breeding grounds.

Chinstrap Penguins - this species seems to be attracted into the ship. There are also King and Macaroni Penguins in the area but they don't come to play with us

Old male Wandering Albatross. They get progressively whiter with age, this bird is very likely over 30 years old, probably closer to 50.

Juvenile Southern Giant Petrel. We are checking young Southern GPs for satellite transmitters - two are in the area that were fitted with transmitters on Kerguelen before fledging a few months ago.
Wandering Albatross - either a young male or old female. This and the bird above spent most of a sunny day circling the ship.

The Egrets have landed

Rather incongruously the 'species of the day' yesterday was Cattle Egret. 22 of them. These small white herons have done very well following man and his cattle farming around the world. They naturally colonised the Americas after about 100 were swept across the Atlantic in a storm and found cattle ranches in Brazil rather to their liking (presumably birds had made the crossing before to find that rainforest didn't suit them). From there they have spread north and south and are now a familiar bird in North America. What this does mean is that the entire american population is descended from a group with possibly not the most top-notch navigation skills, and the species is very dispersive anyway. Unfortunately there is nothing for them out here and we can't keep them on board until the Falklands (where they don't survive well anyway). We've left them be and several have fallen into the sea exhausted. Sad, but that's nature and where they'd be if we weren't providing a relatively dry platform. There have also been a number of dead penguins. All food for the Giant Petrels, some of which have been so full that they couldn't fly (they are also in wing moult which doesn't help) Otherwise there have been a few proper seabirds around (the kind that can land on and drink seawater, which are two key necessary traits for birds out here) and, increasingly inevitably, more Fin Whales (10 blowing as we stopped for the latest CTD)

Cattle Egret sheltering under Sooty, one of the Ship's work boats

Another under some stairs



It's been a bad day! Unfortunately these birds won't survive. Young birds (as these probably are) disperse after they leave their parents, searching for suitable habitat. In the case of Cattle Egrets this would have been important in natural conditions when they had to find the new forest clearings where they could feed on insects disturbed by large animals. Now, with cattle farms being less ephemeral it is of less use, but has allowed them to spread with man and his cows.

Cape Petrel, a common species that hangs around the ship


Antarctic Fulmars

Cattle Egrets behind the incubators. The incubators are for testing the relative effects of iron addition and light availability on phytoplankton growth. Iron is the chemical fertiliser needed to stimulate growth of Southern Ocean algae as it is naturally present in very low concentrations. In large part this is because it is very insoluble when it reacts with oxygen. There is plenty of excess oxygen in the oceans, but only because of the algae in the first place billions of years ago. The law of unitended consequences strikes again.

Whale and ice photos

The right lower jaw is white on Fin Whale. No idea why they are asymmetric

Fin Whales occasionally show their tail when feeding at the surface, but not when diving. The relatively large and swept-back dorsal fin identify it as a Fin Whale. The Sei Whales we saw as we left Falklands had much steeper and larger fins.

The splashguard and blowhole

Iceberg. Some ice must have fallen off, bringing ice above the surface that had been in the water.
The bit to the left is attached to the main berg by an ice foot - akin to a sea stack on a wave-cut platform.

Further to the last post, the whales stuck around and a couple came close enough to the afterdeck for some photos. Interestingly, one of the guys on board who has been coming south since the late 70s says that this sort of gathering of whales was unknown back then, so maybe there is some recovery in numbers since the end of whaling (60s - scarily recent). No Blue Whales seen but they are heard by moored hydrophones near South Georgia so there are still some around. Only a tiny percentage of how many there were though. Hopefully they are also increasing but it may be some time before we notice a recovery.

There's a whale to Starboard

There's a whale to Starboard
Oh wow!, is it still there. grabs camera

There's a whale to Starboard
Oh cool, what sort

There's a whale to Starboard
Is this one still there, I keep missing them

There's a whale to Starboard
Did you see the body or just another blow?

There's a whale to Starboard
Nice, any photos [not many as have mostly been watching from the bridge, none better than last year]

There's a whale to Starboard
Fin, I presume

There's a whale to Starboard
Close? There were three close to the bow earlier

There's a whale to Starboard
Not surprising. looks at instrument that records acoustic echo signal of Krill, fish etc. There's plenty for them to eat and Andy's seen over 50 on his survey.

There's a whale to Starboard
You should try looking to port then, there's four there and an iceberg

There's a whale to Starboard
Do you know 257 across, Panache? E something A something


As you can tell, we've seen a lot of Fin Whales, and are doing a large crossword. Some more glitches with the kit but we seem to be back on track now due to having people around who are very good at fixing things.