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!