Then and now!

Sea ice 22 February 2020

Sea ice 22 March 2020
I thought I was finished but just one last post!  You might like to see how quickly the sea freezes around our frozen south.  Reassuring really in these uncertain time of reports on changing climate.  Interesting to compare the concentration of sea ice reported on 22 February (top image) when we were still in the Ross Sea happily sailing along the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf before heading north out of the Ross Sea, compare that with the report 22 March (bottom image) 4 weeks later. Had we tarried longer in the Ross Sea we may not have got out like explorers in the past such as Mawson, who were iced in for winter which in Antarctica last for 9 months, at least the sea stays frozen all that time!
I've circled the Ross Sea in blue-black and the Antarctic Peninsula in green.  The large purple-pink blobs are high concentrations of sea ice - pack ice! The sea beside the Peninsula is the Weddell Sea (top of each picture); we were in the Ross Sea (circled).
In the West Antarctic, east from Australia (top left of each pic), the land mass overall is not as 'deep' nor is the ice cap, and the Peninsula jutting as it does north beyond the Antarctic Circle, is vulnerable to different weather and sea conditions because of those factors. Of course when 'they' talk about temperatures in Antarctica increasing and ice melting etc, it is almost always the Peninsula they are referring to.

I leave you with another composite image taken 40 years apart in September both times which illustrates this. I offer you these images simply as facts with no political message or judgement attached. It is for information only.

You can track the state of the ice in both Antarctica and the Arctic by looking at the following website https://www.polarview.aq/

March 6 to 9 The Snares/Tini Heke and homeward bound!

Sadly I have no other pix of The Snares but there’s always tomorrow or .......

It was a rough old night - we were now travelling in the Roaring 40s having survived the Furious 50s and the Screaming 60s. We thought we were seasoned sea travellers - but not quite!
I rather like the name of this island group - The Snares. They were so named by George Vancouver in the 1700s because he considered them a shipping hazard. And indeed they are forbidding bordered as they are by steep cliffs - and then there are the winds! 
Unlike other Subantarctic Islands, that were greatly affected by the whaling and sealing industry in the C19th, The Snares remain one of the last pristine areas in New Zealand. As a result, access is only allowed for research purposes and tourists are only allowed to view the wildlife from a boat. There are a few birds and marine mammals endemic to the islands but I didn't see them unfortunately - a return trip is the only thing for it I guess.
We set sail northward early that afternoon to try to outrun an approaching weather front.  I'm glad we did because sailing was rough enough without 'bad' weather! The following day at sea was occupied with end of voyage matters - cleaning our gear and returning boots, settling accounts, packing, etc. It was a bitter sweet day! We berthed at Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch, early the next morning - we got our wake-up call at 5:15 AM! After brekkie, it was customs, border control, etc (on  board which was nice) before teary farewells and boarding a bus into the city, or in our case to the airport where we were staying at the newly-opened Novotel Airport hotel - 3 minutes walk from the airport. Wonderful.  We spent hours that afternoon at the excellent International Antarctic Centre, along with half of the passengers we had just farewelled - there was a reluctance to leave Antarctica behind us!

There were a few tearful farewells. Samuel, our expedition leader, had red eyes but he had had little sleep the night before so the poor man was quite exhausted. A darling and very competent leader. We loved him.

This is the Laura Bassi, an icebreaking research vessel operated by the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale flying the Italian flag. Prior to that she was the British Antarctic Survey logistics ship, primarily used for the resupply of scientific stations in the Antarctic. What a fascinating place. If I could rewind the clock ......

Christchurch airport at 4:00am. A terrific and very well run airport. We stayed at Novotel Airport the night before. Excellent! We had a 6:00am international flight and this place was a 4-5 min walk away. Totally convenient. And the food in their roof top restaurant Food Exchange was excellent.

Clouds and snow. One has to wonder about the forces that create our beautiful world. It gives me pause for thought and great delight!

A William Turner masterpiece! Next time you look at a cloud, particularly if you are flying, try to determine just how many colours there are in clouds. To me it is almost infinite.
(I had a chuckle at the sign on the wing!)

The end of an amazing journey I still have to edit a couple of videos but this is me signing off until ........ the next time from wherever. We will visit this magnificent frozen continent again - in less than 2 years all going well! We will spend Christmas and New Year in West Antarctica on the Peninsula and surrounding Subantarctic islands in this the last frontier on earth.

March 5 Auckland Islands and heading north

The probable eruption points of 2 volcanoes with the lava flow direction of the northern one indicated by the arrow - towards Enderby Island

There are a several islands in the Auckland Islands group and these are dominated by a few volcanoes dating from the Miocene period (12-23 million years ago). I've included a bit of an idea of where those were on the map above. I won't put you to sleep with the geological and European settlement history, suffice it to say it is extensive!
After a wonderful day exploring Enderby Island (part of the Auckland Islands group) by foot the previous day, we spent this morning in the zodiacs cruising the coastline nosing into inlets and sea caves - one of my really favourite things to do. It was a fabulous morning. I did a little more underwater filming trying to video a sealion circling us but all I managed to capture was the rotating blades of the motor and the bottom of the zodiac - I still have much to learn! But I did film some seaweed in a sea cave with a collapsed roof - I think the caves along the cliff face were formed as lava tubes, or 'bubbles' of softer rock, or something similar to that.
Once a cavern now a secret grotto - the roof had collapsed. We saw similar on the Outer Hebrides. Beautiful, eerie, delightful places of cool sanctuary.

A mini forest growing on the ‘air’ roots of trees and other plants on the surface.

Colourful layers. Note the little float bladders on the kelp. Underneath these golden bubbles, the kelp trailed out waving gently in the current suspended by these little bubbles of air reaching toward the light.  These are plants, well actually they are not, they’re algae, but they still need sunlight to synthesise energy. The kelp is a quite fascinating colonial organism. I took an underwater video of the kelp but got the camera tangled in it, but I did get a below surface video of these colourful layers of rock and sea plants.

We chugged into that cave - eerie but too dark to video (just lots of people making silly noises). It was interesting but if you want to see great sea caves go to Papa Stour in the Shetlands (we did that on our Wild Scotland expedition 2018 - see post June 28, 2018 Papa Stour)

Sealions, seals birds, intriguing rock formations and colours - it was a rather magical morning. We watched a pair of Light-mantled Sooty Albatross courting on a cliff ledge right beside a chick - probably not theirs. It was quite special. They finished their courtship with a pasde deux - a swooping, soaring flight high above our heads. All the while the chick, which was still very fluffy but quite large with sorrowful eyes, was snapping its beak at our intrusion. We returned to the ship with a glorious rainbow arching over the hills behind us. Sheer delight!
The white is not bird poo but lichen.

Poetry has abandoned me but how tranquil and simply ‘out there’. You have to be out there to know what I mean!

A rainbow was a glorious farewell to this little stretch of coast. A few cynics didn’t get the romance of it all. Poor them!

We spent the afternoon slipping along the coast in and out of inlets and ending deep in Carnley Harbour where in 1939 a German cargo ship, which was heading for Australia to load up with coal, was ordered not to continue across the Tasman - war had been declared. Instead it headed for and hid in Carnley Harbour for 5 weeks, completely unknown to NZers, while the crew cut down Rata trees to provide enough fuel to reach neutral South America. The incident heightened fears of the real possibility of the Subantarctic islands being used as enemy bases and that fear was fuelled when a few supply ships were sunk by German raiders in NZ waters a little further north. An interesting history, but it was time to head north to the final island visit on our voyage - The Snares.

March 4 Auckland Islands

It was a narrow boardwalk as were they all. Had to make sure I kept my gumboots under control. Tricky!

I really like lichen. No jokes please!

Idyllic glen

These little parsley-looking lovelies belong to a species I think called Hymenophyton flabellatum - a liverwort it seems.

I include this pic to show you my measuring stick. Its origins as you may have guessed from the letters are the forensic med institute (goes back to my lab days!) but I stuck this wee thing on a paddle pop stick. I got some interesting comments!

Flax

A prickly shield fern - Polystichum vestitum (if I read my scribble correctly)  They are stiff as the name suggests and rather grand.

A weeping matipo - Myrsine divaricata. Maybe something a little ordinary to some but just look at those leaves. Dear little hearts!

A reasonable nights sleep and we woke to calm waters - double halleluja!! we had arrived at the Auckland Islands and were going ashore.  I made a very ungraceful landing onto rocks and slippery kelp (I wasn't the only one but ....). I love kelp but NOT to walk on but we were handed ashore and set off on a narrow boardwalk to a graveyard, the remains from an early attempt to settle the island. Then we backtracked to walk to a special marked tree. The best part for me was the forest of gnarled Rata trees. The growing tips and the flowers of these trees are red so at certain times of year, the canopy is ablaze.  I was more interested in the plants than the history so I let the others go ahead while I just dallied among the moss, trees and ferns - so peaceful!
I found quite a lot of interesting plants, lichen and tiny fungi, I was happy and spent the rest of the morning trying to identify them from very meagre resource material. Lindsay picked me up on his way back to the zodiac.

We landed on a sandy beach in Sandy Bay! Enderby Island. Wind swept and glorious desolation - except for the seals, sealions, penguins and other birds.

The dunes were the domain of the seals, sea lions and penguins and off limits to us.

Peaty turf stretching away in front and behind us.

A liverwort perhaps? any ideas?

The secretive and rare Yellow-eye penguins. You can see how it got its name. A delicate pink daubed beak tip looked like lipstick.

A sweet wee Auckland Island Tomtit

Our landing party. I couldn't believe that some people just tromped right through this large plant - Urtica Astralia, a large leafed nettle.

Plantago triantha These grow in sand and were dotted over the dunes. I love their symmetry

Interesting layers - sand, pebbly peat, peat, moss and grass.

Tranquility plus! Lindsay saw a flightless teal in this pond. It's rare and endemic to Enderby Island

Pretty wee plant - yet to be identified but lovely regardless of name.



This watery spot prompts me to tell you that across the hinterland we were walking on very deep peat that moved up and down like a water bed as we walked on it.  Weird experience.

After rambling over the dunes for a few hours it seemed, we cruised along the cliff edge nosing into caves and looking for wildlife. In a shelf on this cliff face, Auckland Island Shag chicks were lunch for big Skuas. Not pleasant to watch but that's life in the raw.

These are a little out of order but somehow we had to board the zodiacs from here. Slippery kelp, my favourite launching pad NOT. I got an 8 out of 10 for my technique from the lovely Rajan. Gentle lovely man from the US.

Summing up!
That afternoon was heavenly. We were dropped at Sandy Bay, Enderby Island, and let loose to wander the sand hills, peat fields etc  - alone! sheer bliss. We saw yellow-eyed penguins, known to Maori as Hoiho. This species is endemic to NZ and a couple of Subantarctic Islands.  We also saw Hooker sealions - they say that this is the only place they breed but we saw a mum and bub on Campbell Island on our way south to Antarctica. So!? The numbers of yellow-eye penguin (now only ~400 pair) and the Hooker sealion have declined so it was special to see them. This was the last place to rid itself of pests - thanks to an intense program of eradication.
Marvellous island to visit . Obviously it is heavily protected so visitors are kept to a minimum - only around 600 per year visit with permits. We felt fortunate. Next time I would walk across the island to the west side to experience the wild coast but particularly to see the plants! Dream on Heather - but why not?

March 2 still more Royals!

Watch how this little guy walks. Now pan up in the hills. They're quite steep right? I had a little stop (or two) to catch my breath getting up there BUT these little waddlers - they climb way up close to the top where they cluster to moult in protected spots! We saw a number of large groups. They are amazing.

March 2 King penguin colony at Sandy Beach

This area was off limits to us as there were still chicks in the colony. You can see them - brown and fluffy. Sweet! Lots of yabbering going on and one bird obviously got a bee in his bonnet and started flapping through the group - "Coming through".

March 2 Green hills and the Royals!

I could have spent the day just gazing at all this.

Way down below you can see some penguins totally dwarfed by the seals - the seals dwarfed the people too!

Pleurophylum hookeri These produce large purple petal-less disk florets. We walked on a narrow boardwalk all the way from the beach to a Royal penguin colony

Big South Polar Skuas. I saw an egg near them - theirs I figured rather than a stolen one.



I absolutely love this plant - Stilbocarpa polaris. A rhubarb-like herb which grows to 1m tall and 2m wide.

Just panning back so you can see in the distance a patch of spotty white - a penguin colony. There were quite a few such colonies on the slopes of these hills. Remember that these little guys have very short legs - what a feat.

It was a raucous crowd!

If you zoom in you will find a few birds that are obviously moulting. March to April the Royal penguins return from the sea to moult and spend up to a month on shore. During that time while they are moulting, they can't return to sea as their feathers are not waterproof (some of them in the process of waterproofing their new feathers; remember that oil gland under the tail). The upshot of that is that if they haven't eaten enough at sea before they start to moult, they die of starvation.

We climbed up the hill behind Sandy Beach to visit the Royal Penguin colony - and importantly for me to have a squizz at the plants! The Island it is definitely coming back into its own! Rabbits and rodents severely damaged the vegetation and hillsides causing landslides and the destruction of breeding sites for seals and birds alike. There has been a significant eradication program to restore the island and, to my untrained eye, it’s looking pretty good.
AND I got to see some of the beautiful mega herbs I was so so hoping to see - and there’s more to come as we push further north to the Auckland Islands and the Snares. In the meantime, enjoy a little of Macquarie Island through my eyes in this and the last couple of posts.

But just before I go ..... These islands, and indeed NZ mainland, remind me of Tasmania. Interesting as I look back over photos from our Tassie trip in 2017, I find weird plants like the Pandani in Tassie’s SW wilderness. The Subantarctic Islands have grass trees and flax, different of course to Tassie but Gondwana but connections perhaps!? The Pandani (Richea pandaniflora) I saw at Lake Oberon, Mt Field NP is certainly an ancient plant. The first European to describe it was botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker in his 1844 publication The botany of the Antarctic voyage of H.M. discovery ships Erebus and Terror. I. Flora Antarctica. That was Ross's voyage to Antarctica when he described the Ross Sea and Ice Shelf . Hooker's name appears linked to a number of flora and fauna of the region of the Subantarctic. I just love that connection!
That's the Pandani of Tassie just for interest.