A sad week - 23 May to 29 May

A Skua with epic timing. Photo by Michelle

This week started off well enough with a visit to the Tristan Albatross nests on Tafelkoppie with Michelle. It was the most beautiful day (yes, we do still have them, even in May), the sun was shining brightly and there was only a little wind. Michelle accompanied me on condition that we climbed Mount Zeus, a small peak on Tafelkoppie that overlooks the base, as she had not climbed it before. This worked out for the best as once we were on top we could not resist the temptation to explore further afield and found some spectacular rocks including one shaped like the biggest cricket bat you have ever seen! On the way down we even got nibbled and preened by a friendly albatross. It is wonderful to see how unafraid the birds here are but at the same time, it is really sad because they used to be like this all over the world and it is only our behavior that has altered theirs elsewhere.

@Lawrence and Matthew: not too much good for BGC!

They are incredibly gentle for such large birds. Photo by Michelle

What made the rest of the week sad was finding out on Wednesday that a colleague of mine from my time at Tygerberg, both when I was doing my Honours and this year, had died on Monday following complications after and operation. She was really young, only a few years older than me and had just received her PhD. She had her  whole life to live and now she is gone. It made me realise that what I miss is not things, rather I miss people: my family, friends even just randoms that you bump into and strike up a conversation with. Also I have missed out on important events in several of my friends and family's lives. My sister had a child, two of my friends got married, another became engaged, some others will have a child in September before I am back. These are important mile stones in peoples lives and I am missing them all. I only get to experience them third hand through photos on Facebook. It is just not the same as experiencing it for yourself. Oh well, only a few more months and I will be back in the thick of it all and wishing for the quiet and solitude of the island again I am sure!

The weather has been atrocious this week which (literally) put a damper on work but I did manage to catch the last few Moorhens for the large aviary so that trial is now underway as well. I feel rather sorry for the Moorhens, all cooped up in tiny cells or squashed into the large aviary. They are really endearing little birds that seem to have genuine personalities and mannerisms. It is for their own good so they will have to man up and tough it out. Come to think of it the situation of the Moorhens in the large aviary is hardly any different to the team's situation. All cooped up and nowhere to go.

I finally succeeded in prizing some photos out of Michelle, so here is the summit photo from our trip to Edinburgh Peak

 Next week will be better I am sure. I hope it is the same for all of you too.

The end of the world avoided and Happy Birthday Mom. - 16 May to 22 May

Happy Birthday Mom, I hope you had a great day!

Or maybe he just misspelled it?

So the 21st of May came and went and the end of the world did not materialize. Somewhere in America a TV evangelist is ruing waking up today. What do you do on the day after the world as supposed to end but failed to? "Er... Sorry I must have gotten my dates wrong" doesn't really cut it as an excuse now does it?

We had a "What You Were Doing When The World Ended" dress up party here last night and after we had all had a few drinks talk turned to island life (as it always does sooner or later). Surprisingly, actually not so surprisingly to tell the truth, we are all of the opinion that the hardest part of being here is not the close, inescapable company of others but rather the inescapable company of yourself. It is troubling and counter-intuitive perhaps but since all of us here feel the same way it must be true. Elsewhere there are always easily available distractions from introspection but here you spend a large part of every day alone and during that time it is impossible not to think of your life and evaluate its worth. I think that if you are dissatisfied with yourself on a deep, personal level you would not survive here. I don't mean to suggest that we "islanders" are a cut above the rest or that our lives are particularly special but rather that we are all satisfied with our lives and achievements to this point. I know that much of my satisfaction with my life derives from my family and friends, so thank you for being there for me. Without you my life would be very empty.

Sunrise Wednesday morning

Sunset Wednesday evening - Photo by Michelle

So back to work topics, I have gathered from speaking to a few of you faithful readers of my blithering that there is some confusion as to exactly what I am doing with the captive husbandry of the Moorhens. Basically what it boils down to is this: During the planned attempt to eradicate the mice from Gough, which will happen at some unspecified date a few years hence, the Moorhens and the Gough Buntings are at risk of extinction because they will either eat the poison and/or eat the poisoned mice and die out. Therefore a captive population of both species must be kept during the eradication to restart the island population if needed. As very little is known about keeping captive populations of these species, small scale testing must be done to establish the best method for keeping the birds. I am testing two different methods, a large aviary with eight Moorhens in it and eight small 1m x 1m x 1m cages each with one bird to see which produces better results. I really feel sorry for the Moorhens in the cages, it is a highly unnatural situation and every time I feed and water them they panic. I hope that the panic will reduce as they become more used to me. I would hate to stress them to death!

The last balloon before the world ended

Enjoy the world for as long as it is here!

Happy Birthday, Dad - 09 May to 15 May

Today marks the 56th anniversary of my father's birth, so happy birthday Dad, have a great day. In a strange coincidence, my team is the 56th since the establishment of a weather station here on Gough, people were here, building the station when my father was born, interesting no?

The Moon at dawn

To follow on from last weeks post, I have emailed several people with whom I was planning on doing a PhD this year, to ask about doing a PhD with them next year. I have promised not to leave suddenly for an island and hopefully they will believe me! There are a wide variety of possibilities open to me, including the possibility of doing a PhD partly in South Africa and partly in Australia or even wholly in Australia. In fact the choices are so wide and varied that it will make it difficult to choose just one. I have even been offered the chance of of staying for another year on Gough but I don't think that I would do that, the appeal of home is far too strong. I have been away from friends and family for five months now and with only four months remaining the idea of making the four months into sixteen is crazy!

Work-wise this week has been fairly quiet, just completing the finishing touches to the moorhen cages and erecting the large aviary. Somehow, the minor last minute things have taken longer than it took to build the cages themselves. It always seems to happen that way, just when you think that you are done, you realize that there are still just a few things that need doing and before you know it, three days have passed and you are seemingly no further. They are complete and the large aviary that Graham and Kalinka built last year has been re-erected so now all that remains is to "furnish" the cages with branches, plants, soil, shelters and feeders and they will be ready for their occupants.

The "battery chicken" moorhen cages.  Each cage is divided into two sections which will each house a single moorhen for a total of eight moohens.

I think that this island life, living in such close proximity with so few other people would make for the most fascinating sociology study. It is difficult because the moment that one person is annoyed with another, everyone knows about it and is affected by it. Avoidance is impossible without being noticeable. If the team was larger, like on Marion where there are around twenty people, I think that it would be a lot easier because it would be less obvious that you are angry or avoiding someone else. It is still better than SANAE however, where the team is eight people and they spend around five months cooped up indoors without being able to go outside and without seeing the sun. Now that, that would be difficult!

The large 5x2x2m aviary which will house eight moorhens communally.

I should mention that the crew of the boat that exploded were taken off Tristan and arrived at Simonstown on Wednesday. They were taken to hospital in Cape Town and happily, all are expected to make a full recovery.

I apologize for the overdose of sunrise/sunset photos this week but almost all sunrises and sunsets here are so spectacular that they deserve to be immortalized.

Have a wonderful week.

All downhill from here

Four and a half months have passed since I arrived and that means that I am just more than halfway through my time here on Gough. So now my thoughts have had to turn to life after Gough and exactly what I am going to do when I return. I turned down a PhD bursary at Stellenbosch to come here and it would be silly not to reapply for it, however, as always with these life altering decisions, there is a fair deal of apprehension, of second, third and even fourth thoughts. Perhaps I have too many choices open to me and that is what is making it difficult but actually I doubt that, it is rather my natural indecisiveness rearing its ugly head. I have trouble deciding what to eat at a restaurant, let alone making decisions that will determine the path of the rest of my life...

Dawn

That's enough introspection and navel gazing for a day though, so now back to business. I have finished building all the moorhen cages, all that remains to be done is to place them outside, anchor them down, "furnish" them with vegetation and shelters and catch their occupants. I also have to wade through the 80 plus pages of Graham and Kalinka's (the biologists on Gough for 2009-2010) report on their captive husbandry experiments and try and figure out what I need to do to keep the birds alive and relatively happy for six weeks.

The Serengeti under a cloudy sky

The Waterfall of Waterfall Point

It hasn't been all work this week, Michelle and Robyn rescued me from the workshop on Thursday to go walking, which made a nice change as I had not been more than 50 meters from the Base all week. We went over Hill 960, which lies to the north of the base, and down to the Serengeti (so-called because the Phylica trees look like migrating herds; not that they look anything like that at all, some artistic license being employed there!) where there is a beautiful waterfall that falls directly into the sea. Then yesterday Michelle arrived at my door just as I was planning a day of leisurely reading my book and watching movies, to ask me to come and explore some caves near the Base with her. Now of course, nothing is that simple on Gough, we had the coordinates for two caves but as we found out, a coordinate with a six meter error is not enough to locate a cave under several meters of trees and bracken and we could not find the first cave. We had more luck with the second one however and found it with no trouble. It was not very spectacular as caves go, with only a large chamber with no passages leading off it, where we were hoping for long lava tubes. It was not to be. I'm assured by Michelle, who is a geologist by profession, that larger caves and a lava passages do exist here, it is merely a matter of finding them. That is easier said than done!

Tumbledown Cave

In other news, last Sunday, a Taiwanese chokka fishing boat, the M.V. Lai Ching suffered an explosion and sank at roughly S42.27 W28.06. Five crew were killed outright, four are missing, twelve are in critical condition with blast injuries and/or ammonia burns from the refrigeration equipment on board and twelve have minor injuries. They were picked up by their sister ship and taken to Tristan where there is a small hospital and a doctor, arriving Monday evening. The SA Navy has dispatched a frigate, the S.A.S Isandlwana, with a several doctors, nurses and paramedics on board to Tristan to assist. There is a hospital on board and if the weather allows, the injured crew will be taken on board and will be taken back to Cape Town as fast as possible. The Isandlwana should have arrived at Tristan last night but she may have been delayed by the storm currently over this area.

Hopefully I will have happier news to report next week!

A new vocation and one hell of a party - 25 April to 1 May

Life on the small scale, this little red sedge plant is about two millimeters across

Creeping moss

A Skua, probably the brightest birds on the island and the biggest chance takers

So this week has been a little different, other than a brief visit to Gonydale and Tafelkoppie on Monday, I have been rediscovering my technical drawing and carpentry skills. I have had to redesign the plans that Richard sent me for the Moorhen cages as they omitted subtle details such as doors; hence the technical drawing skills were required to produce a plan that I could actually work from. Then came the carpentry part, I first had to disassemble the remnants of the cages that were built by my predecessors to salvage enough wood to build the new cages. Fortunately they built them using PozEdrv screws (ones where you put in the screws with a cordless drill, without having to drill pilot holes) which in theory come out as easily as they go in. However, these were quite rusted and not all of them gave up so easily, in fact, I managed to break three bits for the drill while doing it. This established that the bits were not of the best quality (thank you lowest bidder) and so a screwdriver was sacrificed with the assistance of an angle grinder and pressed into service as a bit. This worked much better (especially once I remembered my Dad's advice to tighten the screws slightly first before loosening them - it may seem counterintuitive but it works!)  and all the old framing was dismantled.

A rainbow but not the end of the rain

Skies of fire

A Sooty with a great sense of timing

Assembly of the new cages went fairly smoothly, with one or two minor hitches (never ever assume that the lengths of wood you are working with are the same length or thickness) and they are almost complete. Hopefully tomorrow, with Mornay's assistance, I will cover them with wire and then take them outside and fasten them down securely. It will be a while before they will be used, I shall have to first test them for mouse-proofness for a few days and also collect material to place in them to make them more "homely". Building the cages has been quite fun, it is the first time that I have been getting paid to play with power tools and I have always enjoyed carpentry. It is very satisfying to build things and wood is a great medium for doing that.

So then, it was Saturday and time for a celebration. Sadly, everyone who I had invited (except my fellow team members) backed out the last minute, citing a variation on the theme of: "I have this thing that I forgot about... Sorry." I am not impressed! Just kidding, thanks to everyone for their emails, messages and phone calls, it means a lot.

We never miss a chance for a party on this island and it was wild! Everybody dressed up, a good time was had by all and much alcohol was consumed. Good times, good times indeed. Yes, there are videos in addition to the pictures but those I am not going to share because I will die of embarrassment!

Minnie Mouse - Robyn

Flash Gordon - Prince

Fred Flintsone - Mornay

Captain Planet and Quasimodo - Leonie

Minnie, Quasi and Smurfette - Michelle

Writing a message on the weather balloon, a birthday tradition here

Carrying my ball and chain, another tradition that was forgotten but was resurrected for my birthday. It stayed on all night until I almost dropped it on my foot

Friar Tuck - John

Needless to say today has been a quiet, contemplative day with not much achieved. Recovery is a slow process.