Second summer season

As always it has been awhile since my last post. The summer work has been keeping us busy, with additional projects providing new experiences. My boss has been here, living and working with us since the end of October and has just returned to the UK. With him, he brought our new ZFAs. John is my replacement, continuing the seal work for the next 16 months. Tegan is taking over from Tim with the geeps and penguins, and Carrie is following in Lucys footsteps with the big birds. They came in early on the Protector, and were followed a few weeks later by Pete (the tech), and Emily (a PhD student taking samples from seals with us) on the Shack.

We had a very late end to the leopard seal season, with sightings going into November - including many predation events featuring macaronis as prey. Due to this, we spent quite a few days heading over to Big Mac, walking / sliding down through the colony (via the 'motorway' where they don't generally nest, but instead use to get into the colony without too much disruption), and sitting at the bottom where the macs jump out onto the rocks, providing a great spot for leopard seals to float in wait.

'Steven Sealberg' kills a macaroni penguin.

On the 1st of November we started our daily visits to SSB, our study beach for Antarctic fur seals. This increased to twice-daily visits when the first pup was born. As we had 4 pairs of hands this season instead of two we had last year, the sessions went fairly quickly. We did have more work than last year, with multiple projects piggybacking on the normal work. This allowed us to get extra experience in several sampling techniques which is great, and it should provide some interesting data for a few PhD students. The trips to SSB finished 20 days earlier than last year, making it a much shorter season. So myself and John now have a bit more time to prepare for several other aspects of our jobs, and get out on the nicer days to experience other parts of the island that we haven't seen for a few months. In the coming months we'll be heading up into the valleys each day to check on our study females for the attendance project. This is a good excuse to get out and about, taking photos of pups playing in the streams and exploring.

On top of Tonk on a nice day

Gentoo chicks were tiny. They are now almost the size of the adults.

Grey-headed albatross

Antarctic fur seal pup

Wandering albatross chick testing its wings in the snow.

Although it has been a busy yet compacted seal season for us, we have managed to get involved with a few days of bird work. This has included doing burrow searches in transects for white-chinned petrels, and looking for the new cohort of nesting wandering albatross. Now we should have more time to help others out on the nice days, and finish up training and inside tasks on wet ones.

A youngster swims off SSB.

The return of the birds.

The last few months have been busy. It has been a crazy leopard seal season, one of the busiest on record, and that went into overdrive just after my birthday. Since then, I've spent a lot of time running back and forth between leopard seals, trying to get all of the necessary photos and behavioural observations. It has been amazing though, and it's a privilege to see so many of these impressive seals. Now that October has hit, the leopard seal season is starting to slope off, and the island is being overrun with birds once more. We have gentoos, giant petrels, and grey heads on eggs, our first elephant seal pup, and the wandering albatross chicks are starting to explore the area around their nests. My current favourite hobby is to head to landing beach in the evening and watch the penguins come ashore for the night. It has been great having a bit of extra time to plan photos and wait for the right moment. This spare time has also been spent helping out with the bird work. We've had two film crews here for the last week (new people after 6 months and fresh veg and fruit was welcome and made a nice difference), and as Lucy has become a film star, it gave me the perfect opportunity to help Tim cover her workload, so I've been doing molly albatross checks (reading rings in colonies), gentoo egg checks, and giant petrel rounds. Below are a few of my favourite photos I've taken recently.

We've had a few king penguin visitors recently. These two coincided with rare sunlight casting a nice shadow. After taking this photo I watched them both waddling / falling down a rocky slope to the sea.

Southern elephant seals are on most beaches now, and their bellows can be heard echoing around the island.

We have had quite a bit of ice break-up again, this is Evermann cove filled with brash ice. It's great to watch penguins trying to navigate it.

A gentoo trying to navigate ice in Evermann to get home to its colony at square pond.

A gentoo posing perfectly in the sun, with fog obscuring the base of La Roche.

The film crews arrived a few days after several icebergs blew into our local waters.

Gentoos come out of the water in a hurry - not surprising with leopard seals around.

The mollymawk albatrosses are back - this one is a black-browed albatross.

Elephant seal bellows everywhere!

Three leopard seals sharing the same piece of ice. Now that there are less in the area, I do miss seeing a few a day, but the return of other species does make up for it.

Prior to laying, gentoos carefully construct nests of anything to hand: rocks, mud, tussock grass, and bones.

Some nights there are groups of a hundred gentoos coming ashore together.

Exiting the surf.

Two king penguins look across the bay to base.

South Georgia is often obscured by fog, but sometimes the peaks become visible.

This gentoo penguin didn't quite judge the incline properly and slid down into the water.

Slightly more graceful!

Film crews arrive at the jetty.

There are some impressive icebergs close to the coast. I saw one break apart, a chunk of ice the size of a house falling off, followed by the whole berg flipping upside down, creating a huge wave.

Gentoo colony above natural arch, with the 'mainland' in the background.

Natural arch is a bit out of the way, but great to visit. Hopefully there will be a few ellie pups born here soon.

The view from above the natural arch gentoo colony, looking across to South Georgia.

Bird Sound is ~500m across, so close yet so far. A black-brow colony is on the left, and gentoos on the right.

Winter events: A race, film festival, and birthday

Winter in the Antarctic and sub-antarctic are full of traditions, some between BAS bases, and some between international bases. Below are two of them.


Race across Antarctica
Most years, British bases compete in a 'race across Antarctica', with teams of 6 attempting to cover 4,860 km over the course of 2 months. We finished that distance in a few weeks, so have been going for the 9,600 km total. Activities have different weightings, so swimming 3 km is equal to walking 15 km. I've been pretty busy with the leopard seal round, which is a 4 km route every day, so that slowly builds up. Non-weighted, I have currently gone 481.5 km, 161.5 of which is from walking. The exercise bike is the most efficient way of racking up distance, even though it's weighted as 1:1. Ian and Tim haven't spent much time off base in the last few months (soon to change for Tim!), so they've been on the bike everyday whilst watching films, and have exceeded 2000 km on their own! To our knowledge it is the first time Bird Island has won the race, so we're very happy with that.

48 hour Antarctic film festival
Each year, Scott base (NZ) organises a film festival between all Antarctic and sub-antarctic bases. There are a few rules to this process, with films having to be made and edited within 48 hours (starting Friday night, ending Sunday night). There are also a few things that must be included, which are chosen by other bases. This year there was:

1. A prop = a stethoscope
2. A line = 'May the force be with you'
3. A scene = catwalk
4. A sound = elephant trumpetting
5. A character = a mythical creature

Bird Island has a brief history of entering parodies, with previous films including James Bond, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and The Avengers. This year we decided to make fun of Game of Thrones, which included a lot of silly death scenes, including falling off a rope whilst taking a 'selfie', and drowning whilst trying to catch pokemon on Pokemon Go.

A birthday
On the 11th August, I turned 26. As it was the first birthday since April, everyone went all out and ensured I had a great day. The main theme of the day was food, and there was A LOT of it. It started with a pancake breakfast, cooked by Lucy our devoted winter station leader and albatross botherer. Ian went out on the lep round in horrible weather, giving me a much appreciated day off. I spent some time watching TV and reading my new book (by John Aitchison, who spent awhile filming fur seals and albatross here), whilst drinking coffee out of my new enamel mug. I called home and Kathryn, and then we had a brilliant afternoon tea, with scones, truffles and smoked salmon and cream cheese topped bread. I'm a fan of afternoon tea, especially scones so this went down very well. I was also very lucky to receive hand-made gifts from my base mates. There was a photo frame made by Ian, with photos of a leopard seal kill, and me measuring another seal. I also got a great trio of seals. I'd been debating making some similar to the three fur seals we have on the living room wall, so I was chuffed to receive a leopard seal, a fur seal, and an elephant seal!

A trio of seals (Lep, furry, ellie)

My new mug (the cup....)

A lovely frame and photos

A few hours later, we had tasty steak and chips, and then watched the other film festival entries which we voted for the best overall film, best cinematography, best sound, and best editing.

Our final film can be seen here:
https://vimeo.com/177942571

Midwinter on Bird Island

Midwinter in the Antarctic is steeped with tradition, some starting with the early explorers who celebrated the shortest day which marks the slow return of the sun over the coming months. Nowadays winter isn't quite as extreme, we live in nice, comfortable heated bases with showers and internet that can even handle downloading pac-man via satellite. Despite these modern comforts, winter can take its toll on body and soul, so it is important to take some time off and midwinter is the perfect excuse. It is the main holiday for those South, as Christmas is the busiest time of year for our fieldwork, and personnel movements for those on the continent. This year midwinter fell on a Tuesday, so we took a week off, Saturday to Saturday. The only fieldwork that needs to be done at this stage is my leopard seal round, which others on base were kind enough to take on for the week, giving me some time off. I still had to go out when a seal is seen, but it is great to have a break from the daily 2-3 hour walk I do whilst looking for them.

Beach party
We started off the week with a beach party. On the icy beach outside we played frisbee, boules, did unconventional 'ice swimming', and hit a ball around. At the end of summer when we played french cricket, we had to chase down the ball to stop snowy sheathbills and skuas from stealing it, a problem which isn't as prevalent in winter. We moved inside to have dinner: a starter of vegetables and dips, followed by a very tasty sausage roll and chips in rolled up paper! For dessert we hopped in the outside hot tub and ate fruit juice ice lollies under the stars and an almost-full moon.

Ice-swimming is tiring...

Beach party games

You can't have a beach party without kicking a ball around

Hot-tubbing

Mid-winter Olympics
We returned to the beach on a foggy and windy day to play more games. This time we went curling (with 'stones' made from saucepan lids frozen into the top of a ball of coloured water), did welly whanging, bodger tossing, and a spot of 'archery'. Ian won, I came second, Tim followed, with Lucy taking the wooden spoon.

Curling stones and food colouring to paint a target on the ice

Ian showing us how it's done

Whanging a wellie

Tim expertly throwing a bodger

Mid-winter day
Most of us managed a lie-in whilst Lucy (winter station leader) got up early to make sure the generator hadn't grown unhappy overnight, and to start an amazing breakfast. It's tradition for the SL to make breakfast for the base, which can be a bit of an undertaking for larger bases like Rothera, and I think Lucy put in a similar amount of effort, creating some very tasty items. Over the preceding days, we had been receiving midwinter greetings cards from other bases, from many different countries. We even got an email from the Minister of Science in Japan, and Barrack Obama.

We spent the day cooking several courses. I was in charge of desserts, so had done the majority the day before, but had a few bits to finish so joined the others when there was space in the kitchen. We were all organized, and managed to sit down for a board game before dinner.

After dinner, we sat down and listened to the midwinter broadcast, where family record messages which are introduced by celebrities, specially for those wintering South. It was broadcast on BBC World Service, and is available on Iplayer. We also opened a surprise package from home, which was amazing to receive. I got a 'Marine Biologist because Badass isn't an official job title' t-shirt, and an 'I love counting seals' mug. Presents are always great, but even more so when South as there are no shops, and for some unbeknownst reason, Amazon doesn't deliver. <3 always="" amazon="" and="" are="" as="" but="" counting="" deliver="" doesn="" even="" it="" lovely="" more="" mug="" no="" options="" other="" p="" presents="" receive="" s="" seals="" shops="" so="" south="" t="" there="" to="" when=""><3 always="" amazon="" and="" are="" as="" br="" but="" counting="" deliver="" don="" for="" great="" more="" mug.="" no="" presents="" reason.="" seals="" shops="" so="" some="" south="" t="" there="" unbeknownst="" when="">

Pouring champagne for dinner

Appetizers

Starter accompanied by exchanging cards

Enjoying a feast which created leftovers for a week

I was happy with the outcome of the desserts

Happy with my new t-shirt

We also made presents for one other member of base, drawing the recipient out of a hat during our 'winterers night' at Fairy Point Hut in March, before the summer crew departed. Everyone has been working hard in the workshop, and all of the presents were wonderful, showing some very talented woodwork.

Ian made me a brilliant box, with fold-down front and a drawer

My present to Ian, a box / stand with a carving of BI on the top

Tim gave Lucy an Albatross coat hanger

Lucys' presents for Tim: A barometer, thermometer and clock

After dinner had settled, we danced the night away, spending a good 4 hours on the 'dancefloor'. We may not have a club, or a bar, but we do have a living room with a partially functional disco ball and strobe light, and no neighbours to annoy.

Group mid-winter photo

Listening to the broadcast

Wigs have a habit of coming out when dancing occurs

The day afterwards was spent huddled under duvets watching a variety of films, until I had to brave the elements and do the leopard seal round.

Fieldwork FIDS
Falkland Island Dependency Survey (FIDS) was the precursor to BAS. Earlier in the year we had a FIDS food night, sampling some of the old emergency field rations that had gone out of date (by 10 years in some cases) and had now been replaced with newfangled field food. Apparently punishing ourselves with camp food wasn't enough, so we decided to have a fieldwork FIDS day, wearing itchy flannel shirts in freezing winds. Ian and Tim went out to do the lep round together, and myself and Lucy headed up the ridge to check on the wanderers.

Apparently these are FID poses.

Shocked to see a wanderer chick, and feeling quite cold

Who needs a sledge when you can slide down a frozen stream on your bum?

It was a brilliant week, one that will keep us happy for a while.