Off again and some albatross stories

Off south again on Friday, for a month on the ship around South Georgia and then a fortnight at Rothera, our base on the Antarctic Peninsula. Between these I have a fortnight on Falklands, hopefully allowing for some holiday time on the outer islands. http://www.hkbws.org.hk/BBS/redirect.php?tid=11008&goto=lastpost#lastpost is a set of photos from Falklands – if I can get anywhere near close to matching them I’ll be happy.

While being at sea is great, it has to be said that the variety of things to see isn’t too wide. One thing we do have with us are the albatrosses. There are still plenty of them but numbers are declining due to bycatch from long-lining fishing. Fortunately this is a problem that has been identified and solutions found. The main solution is to simply tow coloured plastic lines behind fishing boats to keep the birds away from the areas where they can reach the bait on the hooks. Other methods that help are thawing the bait first to make it sink faster, dying it blue to put the birds off and setting lines at night where possible. These methods have reduced bycatch around South Georgia to almost zero and have cut bycatch in areas such as South Africa by around 90%. Huge credit has to go to the Albatross Task Force, the governments and equally the fishermen themselves for implementing these measures. This is a problem with a solution, the process of implementing that solution is ongoing but the stories of co-operation are very encouraging. Hopefully the declines can be halted while there are still healthy populations and numbers can soon recover. See http://www.rspb.org.uk/supporting/campaigns/albatross/

Another threat that seabirds face is from plastic pollution. Thankfully this is very limited in the Southern Ocean as the water largely goes around Antarctica, away from major sources of waste. The North Pacific is a very different matter however with plastic coming in from Japan, China and the US. The water in the North Pacific, like that of all ocean basins that are bounded by continents to the east and west, spins round in a big gyre before sinking in the middle. This concentrates the plastic, which floats, into the Pacific Garbage Patch, an area where plastic is far more common that life of any form. There are three species of albatross there. The Short-tailed Albatross was once very numerous but they were killed for their feathers, possibly up to 10 million birds being processed on an industrial scale. Just after WWII no breeding birds were known and the species was considered extinct. Thankfully 50 birds survived at sea and started breeding again on Torishima, with the first nest of the recolonisation being found in 1954. Torishima is however an active volcano so the population still isn’t safe. Efforts are being made to translocate juveniles to other islands (they have naturally colonised another island) and encourage breeding on Hawaiian islands, with some success. The population is increasing and there are nests on Midway and Kure Atoll this year. However birds in the North Pacific are at huge risk from plastic pollution. These photos, of Black-footed Albatross chicks, tell their own gruesome story: http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway/#about

Another blog

Not me this time (I'm off on 22nd December as things stand), but a good friend is about to do Southampton-Chile on a research cruise. She will be on board working (well, volunteering) for Education Through Expeditions, a new charity aiming to inspire school children through communicating with them about expeditions (scientific and 'true' exploration). It will mean she has done Antarctic, Arctic and the bit in between within 9 months.

http://www.etelive.org/amt20


Also, for those who like this sort of thing, another, very amusing blog byAlan Jamieson, someone else I've been to sea with, has just ended but is worth a read: http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/blogs/story.aspx?id=804 I particularly like the line

"So I tip my imaginary trilby to these fellas for being jolly good sports, and for being so very professional and silly, and for knowing exactly when to be which."

South Georgia dusk to dawn

Late update, never quite get round to posting the last photos of a cruise. Photos taken 20th and 21st April. We called in briefly to King Edward Point (KEP, 'capital' of South Georgia) to pick someone up and give the doctor some supplies (some medicines, it wasn't just chocolate). Fantastic cloudscape (and demob silliness) that evening and then we stayed in the shelter of the fjord overnight. Still being on nightshift pattern meant I saw the stars and dawn as well:





The Southern Cross


Jupiter over a ridge as dawn broke:

And looking the other way

For those interested, the nighttime photographs were hand held, resting on a 'bean-bag' (actually my gloves shoved in my hat, luckily it was quite warm) on the side of the ship (it was also very calm) with shutter times of 0.5 to 1 seconds, ISO 800-1600.

Birds strikes, whales and icebergs

A regular feature of working at night on the ship is birds coming onto the deck after being attracted to the lights. They are unfortunately sometimes injured in collisions but most of the time they are unhurt. The deck isn't the cleanest place and they try to find a dark corner so can pick up oil, grease, degreasing agent etc. Throwing them off normally results in them flying straight back into the ship so we tend to box them up in the lab and release them at dawn.

Me releasing a Thin-billed Prion a couple of weeks ago - there aren't any Thin-billed down here (I think) and the beard has grown since (photos courtesy of Steve Jones). The flash makes it look darker - they are released soon after the horizon is clear, which has got earlier as we have moved effectively two time zones east without changing clocks. Ideally photos shouldn't use flash - I gave it a bit of time to recover and it flew off fine.


We left the Antarctic Fulmars to it as we didn't have boxes big enough, they tend to squirt oil at you if the feel threatened and also because they seemed to be having a good time running around the deck.

One did however fly into the anemometer on the foremast and break it. This meant we had to stop while Mike the sparky went up to fit the spare (wind speed is an input to the dynamical positioning that keeps us on station to within a few metres, as well as being useful scientifically, though not critical for this cruise).

Mike up in the cage to replace it

Getting supplies

New sensor in and the birds seem interested in testing its strength - it got pecked but not hit.

While Mike was up there we were stopped to reduce the ship movement and four Humpbacks approached from ahead of the bow and hung around for a bit. In a break with the pattern the light was initially quite good as the whales came close, but soon returned to the normal snowy conditions.


Also, with autumn pushing on and the wind from the south we are seeing more Snow Petrels.


Also, several icebergs around as there normally are.

With a Southern Right Whale tail

Same one with a Southern Giant Petrel

Probably volcanic debris from the South Sandwich Islands, with a calving event creating the clean bit

An old blue bit of ice sheet. It had a couple of arches the other side but we only saw them in poor light
A very clear horizon

And finally, slightly uncouth but true to the cruise name of ANDREX...

Whale tails

Slight delay in posting due to need to catch up with image processing: I filled my 8gb card twice, in a day. It's also been quite a busy period for work, but all data and image processing up to date now and much further between stations (40 miles instead of 4) and they are deeper so more time for work and non-work. First cardful was Southern Right Whales in the morning and then Humpback Whales in the afternoon. Conditions not ideal for photography but managed to find a good setting on the camera, came in and wiped the snow from the lens every so often and then had a play in Lightroom.

Southern Right Whale fluking:

And Humpback Whales

Humpback Whale spyhopping

And a couple of others


And a final Black-browed Albatross