The start of the journey South: The Falkland Islands

The flights from Heathrow, San Paulo, Santiago and Punto aries ending at Mount Pleasance in the Falklands went rather smoothly, with the journey taking two days. We stayed the night in Santiago, which resulted in an hour and a bit in a taxi into town whilst fearing for our lives due to fairly crazy driving, which was worth it for an amazing steak and roasted sweet potato. The airport check-in started at 5.30am the next morning, so everyone set early alarms. This was unnecessary as we woke to the hotel shaking violently at 4.30am. It was my first earthquake, lasting about half a minute, the epicentre was several hundred miles away, although it measured at 6.8!

Once in the Falklands, we boarded the awaiting bus which took us outside of the military base, and through barren rocky landscapes until we finally made it to Stanley. We had a day and a half here, so walked to Gypsy Cove past several wrecks.

 

Back on the ship, we listened to several safety briefs, and had a muster and lifeboat drill, we organised all the fresh produce (‘freshies’) in the hold, ready to be delivered to the islands. After seeing food, I decided to go into town one last time, and buy some food for the last time in 18 months. We left the harbour at sunset, with everyone standing on the monkey island (above the bridge) watching birds flying past.

 

There were several Gentoo penguins porpoising towards land, making that two penguin species in as many days. That was soon to be broken though. We moved to a different harbour to refuel for a couple of days, so we made the four hour round-trip to Bertha’s Beach, having heard that there is a Gentoo colony at the end. We were greeted by a few hundred penguins calling to each other, with some on eggs and passing pebbles around, with sheep wandering past the colony.

We sat and watched them for a time, until the sun started to disappear. As we were making our way back to the ship, I saw something near the surf. It turned out to be the 3^rd penguin species in as many days, a King. Now I just need to see some seals!

Watching a sleeping king

We returned to the beach the next morning to try and remedy the lack of pinniped sightings, and were not disappointed. The king penguin was still present, as were South-American terns, a Southern sea lion, and about 8 commerson dolphins. We watched the dolphins for half an hour or so as they were surfing the waves and coming into the shallows.

Pre-deployment summary

I've now been employed by BAS for little over a month, and a lot has happened. I've met a lot of people, sipped a lot of tea, and forgotten a lot of names. The second week that I was in Cambridge consisted of attending "conference", a 5 day event that sees all first timers thrown together for a combination of information gathering and team building.

After listening to a lot of talks, we escaped outside to do some practical training on the appropriate action in the case of an oil-spill, and a fire (hopefully not combined!)

Inflating a boom to stop the spread of oil

Tim putting out a fire

The next two days were spent learning first aid, with activities ranging from injecting drugs into an orange, to full-on scenarios with actors and squirting blood. This training was fairly specialized to the environment that we will be living in, dealing with hypothermia, falls down cliffs, and bites, but I've already found uses for it in situations in the UK (thankfully nothing too major). Tim has gone on to add to this knowledge by spending a few days at a hospital in Plymouth being trained by doctors in A&E, dealing with real patients and high-tech simulators. Whilst South we will continue to be trained remotely with nights organised to teach us how to put in IVs and suture wounds.

After our time in Girton, those that hadn't already undergone the fun of being thrown around in a wave pool, went on a sea-survival course. This is mandatory for travelling South on the ships as we are technically crew, and the Southern Ocean is an unforgiving environment. Next stop was Derbyshire, where we spent 3 days getting to know the winterers from other bases whilst doing field skills including rope work, orienteering, blizzard search and rescue, and casualty evacuation.

Our accommodation

Since these intensive courses, we have been spending our time in the office going to various meetings and talks, and drinking a lot of tea as the cafe adheres to Antarctic meal times, with the possibility of breakfast, "smoko" (tea and cakes) in the morning, lunch, followed by another smoko. Last week I went to Birmingham, learning about (and hopefully becoming certified to ship) dangerous goods at sea. Basically, don't mix acid and explosives. It was a lot more interesting than I expected as there is a lot that you don't think about when you hand a box to someone to ship, down to whether the box meets UN standards, or if a plastic container has expired (despite their long-term presence in the environment, they are only certified for 5 years, regardless of whether they were used in that time!).

This is our final week in the office, and to finish up we have been in the lab removing and measuring carapaces of krill, and learning how to identify species of squid based on the morphometrics of their beaks. We have been told throughout the last month that travel plans do often change, and that's been proven as this morning we found out we will (**probably**) be flying from Heathrow on commercial airlines to the Falklands via Chile (and probably several connections), instead of flying with the RAF from Brize Norton to the Falklands via Ascension Island. We will now be leaving on the 5th of November, arrive in the Falklands on the 7th, and then sail on the JCR on the 9th, and won't arrive at Bird Island until approximately the 21st of November as we are hopefully going via Signey on the South Orkneys, and KEP on South Georgia; which I'm excited to see.

As this is likely to be my last blog until I'm having a break from vomiting in the Southern Ocean, or have arrived at BI, I'll provide the best way to contact me:
My BAS email is jamins@bas.ac.uk 
Follow and comment on my blogs (there is a subscribe button on the right which will email you new posts).Or comment and send messages on facebook. I'll be very busy over the austral summer, so don't expect an instant reply, but I'll try to keep up with things, and will be more on top of communication, blogs and uploading photos as the year goes towards winter.
We will only have post twice a year (April and November), so it would be lovely to receive a postcard or letter from friends; anything that isn't a bill would be great really! I'll reply to any post, although it may smell like a penguin colony, which could be great or awful, depending on your view.
The address which will forward on to the base is:

James Robbins
Bird Island Research Station
c/o British Antarctic Survey
Stanley, Falkland Islands,
South Atlantic,
FIQQ 1ZZ

It feels surreal that it's been 6 months since I got the job, and in 3 weeks, I'll be finally on my way to living amongst millions of seals, penguins and albatross!