Tristans and the St. Helena - 24 January to 30 January

This has been a busy week, with the Sagina work continuing apace. The anchors we use for (most of) the drops are 50mm scaffolding pipes driven into the ground. I was informed that they are very strong - "It took five people pulling to move one" - which to anyone with any experience of load hauling is not very much force at all. Better anchors are the Phylica trees and the Spartina tussocks (a bamboo-like grass) which we use when we can. So much for the "Health and Safety" forms we had to read and sign...

We also now are under a fair amount of time pressure. The M.V. Edinburgh will be here at the end of February to collect Ross and we need to have finished the inspections before that as the regulations (and common sense) will not allow me to do the work on my own.

Gough Island Moorhen, Gallinula comeri, adult male

We also did the monthly Moorhen call counts this week. This is probably the easiest part of the work on the island. The Moorhens are quite shy, and their nests are difficult to find making estimating their population size is rather tricky. Therefore, we have several sites on the paths around the Base where once a month we have to sit quietly for five minutes and count all the Moorhen calls in that period. The number of calls are then recorded and compared to previous years' data and population size changes can be estimated. Neither Ross nor I have all that much confidence in this method as it seems to be highly subjective, but in the absence of any other ideas we shall continue.

Tree fern on the Tafelkoppie path

The nice part of the Moorhen call counts is that we get to go up Tafelkoppie, behind the base (I have posted a map of the island on my Flickr page) and this time we were able to combine the Moorhen call counts with a scheduled trip to the small (10-20 nests) Tristan Albatross colony. We have to mark each occupied nest with a numbered plastic pole and check if each nesting bird has a metal leg ring and a plastic Darvic. The metal leg ring is placed on the bird and is unique. The Darvic is a large plastic band with an alphanumeric (i.e. G56) code stamped into it in large easy to read letters. We place Darvics on the nesting birds to enable quick identification with minimal disturbance to the birds.

Ross placing a Darvic on a Tristan. The egg is under his hat on the the extreme left of the photo, to protect it from the Skuas.

Prince, on top of Mt. Zeus

This was a really enjoyable trip up Tafelkoppie as Prince, the senior meteorologist, was able to come with us. This was his first real hike on the island since he arrived. We were really lucky with the weather and because we had plenty of time, climbed Mt. Zeus and were rewarded with a magnificent view. I shot a panorama from the top and have uploaded it here. My Photoshop skills weren't up to blending it together properly but if anyone feels that they can do a better job, email me and I shall send you the images.

The scale of features and the distances on this island are strange. Covering even short distances at the lower altitudes on the island takes lots of time because of the vegetation and burrows. When you get above 400m, into the alpine/sub-antarctic vegetation then walking is much faster (though you do still have to be wary of waist deep mud holes) but distances seem much further than they truly are. For instance, what looks like it will take at least 30 minutes to cover can be covered in about 10 minutes and the entire time you are walking it looks as if it will really take 30 minutes, until you walk into whatever you were aiming at. Hopefully, I will get better at estimations soon.

A Tristan threat display

The highlight of this week was the passing of the R.M.S St. Helena. She is on a tour of the islands, from St. Helena to Cape Town to Tristan and then back to Cape Town. She sailed past on Saturday and we were able to talk to some of the passengers who include my Grandfather's cousin Roger Le Maitre, a geologist who was involved with the risk assessment of the Tristan volcano in 1961, and Micheal Swales, an ornithologist who was one of the first scientists to study the Rockhopper penguins on Gough in the 1950s. The Administrator of St. Helena, who is in charge of all the British south Atlantic islands including Gough, was also on board and had many questions about island life and work. Sadly the St. Helana could not stop and was soon gone.

R.M.S. St. Helana

We had planned an even busier week, with a three day trip to the Tristan colony in Gonydale planned for the weekend, but the weather chose not to play along and we remained in base. I'm really glad we did as we have had nearly 100mm of rain since Friday and 60-80kt winds. Not nice camping weather at all. Hopefully we will have more favourable weather next week.

Goodbye to Seal Beach - 17 January to 23 January

Before I get into the events of this week, I would just like to thank everyone who encouraged (and continue to encourage) me to write this blog, it is quite cathartic. All of you get to read this and find out what is happening with me and it would be quite nice if some of you would occasionally drop me a line (nicholaslemaitre(at)gmail(dot)com) to tell me what is happening in your lives. Lastly, I have a Flickr account where I have uploaded high res versions of some of the photos on this blog. You can access it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/niclemaitre/

Stormy weather at Crane Point, the sea stack on the left was attached to the mainland by an arch that fell down in 1991

Anyway, back to the news. This week has marked the end of our regular trips to Seal Beach to abuse penguins. We made one visit to the Seal Beach colony and to the Tumbledown colony (which was my first visit to the latter) on Monday to count the number of chicks and weigh them.

Juvenile Gough Moorhen, Gallinula comeri, endemic to Gough

Something I should have said right back at the beginning is that all the work we are doing on the Rockhoppers is to determine the reason for the sharp decline in the size of the colonies both here and on Tristan. Very little research has ever been done on the Rocky's (probably because of the smell) and so everything we are doing has little to no precedent.

Subantartic Fur Seal and pup

The seals have been breeding - we saw the first seal pups of this year on Monday - and this has made them even more cranky and aggressive than usual. Michelle, who came with us to help with the chick count, was walking along about five meters below me when I startled a sleeping seal. The seal instead of backing off as they usually do, took flight, launching itself off a two meter high drop and landing virtually on top of Michelle. She just managed to get her stick (we carry heavy wooden poles with us to fend off seals) between the seal and herself before it tried to bite her. It got the stick and not her leg and then slid away. Seal bites are not a minor thing, last week on Marion, one of the researchers was bitten by a seal, had to get twenty eight stitches in her thigh and will be out of action until April. Later this week during a quick visit to check if any of the tagged penguins have returned I was also nearly bitten by a seal that bolted as I walked past it. It just brushed my leg but that is too close for comfort!
Thankfully all the Rocky work is now done until the moult in March.

The rest of the week was given over to the curation of the Rocky samples: basically sorting, cleaning, labeling and packing away all the blood, feather and stomach samples that have been collected since November.
We also sorted out the rope access gear in preparation for starting the Sagina inspections.

Antarctic Tern, Sterna vittata tristanensis

Sagina procumbens, or Procumbent Pearlwort is a small plant, thought to have been introduced to Gough from Marion island, where it is extremely invasive. It occurs on a stretch of cliffs about 400 meters in length, close to the base. We have to abseil down the cliffs looking for signs of it, and when we find it, remove the plants and the surrounding soil before spraying the area with herbicide.

Sooty Albatross adult, Phoebetria fusca, gorgeous birds with the most awful screech/scream of a call

Ross on rope

[There is going to be gear junkie jargon in the next bit so feel free to skip it if you like] The rope access work is harder than it looks, we carry about twenty kilograms of equipment and ascending the rope is not fun with so much weight on your harness. Also, the bean counters at the RSPB, who know nothing about rope access, have bought the cheapest possible work harnesses made by Singing Rock. The harnesses are poor copies of Petzl Navahos, while they conform to the same specifications but are much cheaper and less comfortable and they only have two gear loops which is very frustrating. The bean counters obviously have a list of equipment to buy each year which is why we have eight Stops, three I'Ds and two GriGris, they don't understand that desenders don't wear out... If they didn't buy new descenders each year then they would be able to save enough money to buy decent harnesses. We use Croll ascenders but have about ten chest harnesses, that are designed to keep you upright in the event of a fall (since we are constantly hanging on the ropes, this is not a risk) and are not designed to be used with a Croll and only three Petzl Securs which are designed to keep a Croll in the correct position. Go figure...

All the gear we carry during the rope access work. Top left: 2x30m of 11mm static. Top right: Herbicide sprayer, bottle to put Sagina plants in, trowel and scraper to remove plants. Bottom left: harness and 3 cowstails. Bottom right: Etrier, 2 slings, 2 shunts, I'D, 2 knives, Croll, chest harness (replaced by Petzl Secur now), 2 prussiks, radio, 8 carabiners, 3 maillons, a jumar and a Petzl Vertex helmet

The nice thing about starting the rope access stuff (which is the actual reason I was employed) is that for the first time I actually know what is going on. Also, while descending we have to remove any loose rocks and earth that might be dislodged by our ropes when we are below them. Basically it is a licence to drop large rocks down a cliff into the sea, which is great fun. My hips have taken a beating from the harness and my arms aren't used to jumaring but I will gradually harden up as the work continues.

Rock clearing

That is it for this week, have a great week and thanks for being such faithful readers. Special thanks to those who have mailed me to let me know what is happening in your lives, those of you who haven't, do drop me a line please. It is great to hear that there is still a world out there...

Things are looking up. 10 January to 16 January

Most, if not all of you, must have heard by now what happened on New Years. Anyway, the long and the short of it is Ross has been fired by the RSPB and will be heading home on the next ship. I am not sure when that will be but it means that I am staying put until September, so you are all free of me for another nine months still.

Much of this week has been taken up by hearings and other processes so we haven't really done anything of note. We have been the last eight days without rain and the stream that supplies water to the base has dried up. Thankfully it rained hard on Friday and Saturday, before the tanks ran out and now water is plentiful again. We shall have to be careful during February...

Something that I hopefully be able to post photos of soon is one of the most amazing sights I have every seen, huge flocks of Great Shearwaters forming rafts on the sea and thousands more flying everywhere. It happens most evenings but I haven't been able to get any decent photos as of yet. However, this week I shall make a special effort.

That is it really, nothing more to relate, you can all go back to work now. I don't even have any nice photos to post, sorry.

Trouble in Paradise - 3 January to 9 January

By now, most of you will have heard what happened here on New Years Eve, if you haven't I'm not going to go into it on a public forum like this but if you want to hear the details, mail me. Anyway as a result of those events, I have decided that getting off this island earlier rather than later is sounding like a good idea and I am seriously considering resigning and coming home in March. Be that as it may, I'm pretty sure you're not reading this to hear me moan, so I'll stop before I scare you off...

With all the admin as a result of the "fun times" mentioned above, very little field work has happened this week, we did some Sooty Albatross counts, basically you sit on a headland and scan the cliff opposite with binoculars and count all the Sooty chicks and adults you can see in a defined area. It is even less exciting than it sounds but it was nice to be able to get out of the base on my own for a while.

A Sooty Albatross chick, aka tea-cosy with a beak

We also did some Great Shearwater burrow-scoping. You take a burrow-scope, which is a long thick cable with a camera and low intensity LEDs on the one end and a battery pack and transmitter on the other. You also have a small box with a black and white LCD screen that displays the images from the camera. You stick the camera (and your arm) down holes in the ground and wiggle it around until (if you are lucky) you see a bird. Then you have to record if it was incubating an egg or a chick or just there. When the ground is wet (which it almost always is) this is quite unpleasant.

Gratuitous Yellow Nosed Atlantic Albatross chick

Anyway, many people have been asking me for photos of the base, the facilities and my room but taking the pictures without a fisheye lens is tricky so here is a link to some photos taken by one of the previous teams.

I went fishing again this Sunday, with more success; catching several Five-Fingers, Acantholtris monodactylus, one of which I kept. They taste great when braaied with an apricot jam marinade, just as you would do for Snoek.

My Five-Finger, about 1.5kg

The happy fisherman...

The fishing also provides a great reason to get out of the base for most of a day, and why not when the fishing is really excellent too.

Thats it for this week, hopefully I'll still be around to post a new one next week.
Ciao

Happy New Year - 27 December to 2 January

I'm going to start off this post by wishing you all a wonderful New Year and I hope that your heads don't hurt too much...

It has been another long week on the island and there has been no rest for the wicked, even if the rest of the world has stopped. The birds pay no attention to our holidays and so there was much work to be done.
On Monday myself, Ross, Michelle, Mornay and Robyn headed up Tafelkoppie, the peak to the North East of the base. Ross and I had to do Moorhen call counts, which basically are: you hike to a marker and wait there for five minutes counting every time a Moorhen calls. You do this at eleven points and it is supposed to give a rough idea of Moorhen numbers. The others simply came along to get out of the Base and see some of the island. The Sooty Albatrosses breed on the cliffs on the way up and some of them were obliging enough to pose for me. They are really cool looking birds, sooty grey with a yellow "go-faster" stripe on their beaks.

Sooty Albatrosses, Phoebetria fusca

The next day was spent trying to find 70 occupied Soft-plumed Petrel burrows on two transects. We only managed to find fifteen in almost four hours of crawling around in the bracken. We may therefore have to abandon that study as it is going to take lots of our fairly limited time just to locate enough burrows.

The remainder of the week was spent back with the penguins, we have at last been told to stop tagging birds with depth loggers and simply try and recover those that we can, and take stomach samples from ten male and ten female birds to make up the numbers. The January logger deployment has been scrapped completely, which is a wonderful relief. As you may have gathered, Seal Beach is not my favorite place...

Then it was New Years eve and time to party... The less said about that the better. I'll just say it was memorable and I have the hangover to prove it!

Oh well that's it for today, I'm off to start making supper because it is my day as chef today. Steak and mushroom pie...

Christmas and Goodbyes - Monday to Sunday - 20 December to 26 December

This has been a week of contrasts, saying goodbye to Jeroen, Katrine and Lourens who are heading back to Tristan on the Edinburgh, and for Jeroen, the long trip back to New Zealand via Cape Town.

Leaving the island on the "Fifty Pence piece", the M.V. Edinburgh in the background

Once the Edinburgh has left we are marooned on Gough until she returns in early February. It was sad to say goodbye to Lourens and Katrine, who had been really nice to the lonely, bored South African on Tristan, but they have work to complete.

Skua

This week has been enjoyable otherwise, on Wednesday myself, Ross and Michelle hiked over to the Giant Petrel to put marker rings on the legs of the chicks. The colony is on the Western side of the island, about 8km from the base. To get there you have to hike up from the base towards South Peak and across Gonydale, a high altitude (for Gough) wetland where the Tristan Albatross breed.

Tristan Albatross

Once we had crossed Gonydale and had moved over Cooper's Col to the Western side of the island, the weather became terrible. The wind picked up and was blowing so hard that at times it was difficult to walk and the clouds dropped lower until we were walking in a complete whiteout. Fortunately we quickly traversed around West Rowett peak and dropped down to the Giant Petrel colony.

The Giant Petrel colony with Saddle Island in the background

We quickly put up the tents and then went over to the colony to start ringing chicks. I must say that Petrels are not my favorite birds, they are ungainly and ugly. I now have even more reason to dislike them. When the chicks  feel threatened, as they do when you approach to grab them before attaching the tag, they spit a mixture of fish oil and vomit all over you. It stinks to high heaven and is extremely nauseating. To make matters worse it began to pour with rain. There is nothing quite like crawling around on your hands and knees in bird vomit to make your day. We tagged the first half of the colony (about 80 chicks) and then went to bed.  We discovered that the tent leaked right over my bed and had to jury rig a survival bag and a jacket to keep me more or less dry for the night. Not the best night of my life for sure!

Wind driven rain

The following morning the rain stopped and we were able to tag the rest of the chicks and start the long walk home.

There are two rivers on the Western approach to the base that can become impassable after heavy rain but fortunately we where able to cross with only some wet feet. It was three very bedraggled and smelly people who arrived back at the base in desperate need of a hot shower and hot meal.

And then it was Christmas...

First week on Gough - Wednesday to Sunday - 15 December to 19 December

Church Rock, on the Northeastern coast of Gough

Good news, I have finally made it to Gough after nearly a month in transit. It is a real relief to be here and finally have something to do after spending weeks sitting around with no real purpose. I really don't handle boredom well!

All the way to Gough the sea was quite rough and stormy making me worried that we wouldn't be able to land, but when we came around the Southeastern side of the island it calmed totally. Getting on to the island is normally by helicopter from the SA Agulhas but the Edinburgh is a fishing vessel so no helicopter. We were lowered over the side in a small fiber glass dinghy and motored over to the cliff at Crane Point where we climbed aboard the "Fifty Pence piece", a flat platform about 1.5m in diameter with rope rigging around the sides. We were then hoisted up the cliff by a crane. It was quite fun, if you don't mind heights.

The rest of Wednesday and most of Thursday were spent unpacking and learning from Jerone (the guy I'm replacing) how to calibrate and download GeoLocator Systems (GLS), used to track birds and Dive Depth Loggers (DDL), used to measure penguin dive habits.

Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross with Chick

For the rest of the week we have been counting Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross nest occupancy and contents which involves walking through some of the worst terrain I have ever hiked in. The braken covers everything and is headheight in places and the ground is full of burrowing bird nests which you fall into constantly.

Ross Cowlin, the other RSPB researcher on the island is about my age and (insert chorus of "It's a small world after all) is from Cape Town and used to date Bridget Maasch, a friend of a friend of mine, Kate Larmuth. Weird huh?

Ross, waiting for penguins to return

We have also been tagging Northern Rockhopperpenguins with DDL's, which is a rather tedious process. Fifteen DDL's were attached to adult penguins at the beginning of the month and we have to recover them as the birds come in to feed their chicks. Trying to pick out which bird is which is really difficult even after we have marked their beaks with Tippex and spray painted their chest's after tagging them. We also have to take a bunch of physical measurements, six feathers, 1ml of blood and induce vomiting by filling their stomachs with water and then holding them inverted over a bucket to collect the stomach contents. We are going out there tonight to see if we have better luck in the evening and night than the previous two days daytime shifts. We have recovered only four of the fifteen deployed loggers (which cost $600 each) and we need at least thirty DDL measurements per month for this study...

Northern Rockhopper penguin

The penguin colony is in the middle of Seal Beach, about half a km from the base, the seals are quite aggressive and territorial, they only move because we are bigger than they are. At night with headlamps they wont be able to see how big we are and will only move reluctantly. Tonight is going to be interesting.