Midwinter in the South Atlantic!

Happy belated midwinter from Gough Island! 

Midwinter is one of the best island traditions. It is the most important celebration on all of the southern Bases. It was actually last Wednesday, but one of our team members was observing Ramadan so we postponed our celebrations until he could join in too. In fact, the two of us spent the actual mid-winter up at Gonydale with the Tristan Albatrosses. The youngsters are doing well, we have more than usual for this time of year and they’re getting huge! The largest is almost 8 kg and getting bigger by the day.

Our midwinter dawned with cold temperatures, gale force winds and heavy rain; not ideal given the island tradition of a team swim in a beautiful cove called Swimgat near the Base. Still, the bravest (or perhaps just stupidest) of us set off for a very cold, and very brief dip in the freezing waters running off the mountains.

A chilly dip at Swimgat (Tom McSherry)

Much of the afternoon was spent preparing our midwinter feast and decorating the dining room with a beautifully set table, paper chains, and even a snowstorm. With everyone dressed for dinner, we sat down to enjoy roast lamb or chicken, with chocolate cake and apple pie for pudding.

The table set and ready (Em Witcutt)

Midwinter snow, even on Gough! (Em Witcutt)

Our midwinter feast (Tom McSherry)

We finished up with drinks, games, and dancing in the bar. The whole day was a lot of fun, and a welcome break from what can be a monotonous life on Base.

The boys playing pool (Tom McSherry)

Fun in the bar (Tom McSherry)

Dancing the night away (Tom McSherry)

On Gough, midwinter also marks the start of the home stretch of each expedition. Come September the SA Agulhas will arrive with the new team, and will take us back to South Africa. From there, we’ll head home to the UK. The island is an incredible place and we both love our work here, but we left home almost a year ago, so are both looking forward to seeing our families again. That, and fresh milk and vegetables!

Time To Say Goodbye

Apologies for the lack of blog posts recently, internet has been down in the South Atlantic for the last two and a half weeks; it’s amazing that we have internet out here at all!

Anyway, this post was supposed to be from a few weeks ago, so here it is now…..

Mid-winter’s day has just passed and the island has most definitely entered the quieter winter period. All Mollys have departed and more recently we said goodbye to our final Sooty fledgling. Our first Molly egg was laid in the study colony on 22^nd September 2016 and the final fledgling departed on 24^th April 2017. Our first Sooty egg was laid in the study colony on 30^th September 2016 and the final fledgling left the island on 8^th June 2017.

Neither of us have had the pleasure to monitor a species for such a long time before. It has been fascinating to watch these chicks grow over the months, and we have watched our albatross friends leave Gough with fairly mixed emotions.

Below are some final photos of this season’s birds, including the moment when one of our young Mollys took its first ever flight, after months of patiently waiting on the ground.

A final wing test (David Kinchin-Smith)

Lift off! (David Kinchin-Smith)

What a feeling! (David Kinchin-Smith)

And out into the Atlantic (David Kinchin-Smith)

Practice makes perfect (David Kinchin-Smith)

One final Sooty (David Kinchin-Smith

An adult....but you get the idea (David Kinchin-Smith)

David

Plastic Peril

Last week we headed up to the Tristan Albatross colony at Gonydale to monitor this year’s breeding attempt. So far so good, we still have over 120 chicks. The mice are keeping their distance, and we’ve only had a few failed nests. Fingers crossed that many of these chicks will make it to fledging age.

It isn’t just the mice that threaten these beautiful birds though. Whilst visiting the colony, we came across a stark reminder that even those chicks that grow to fledging age still face some daunting statistics. Chief amongst the threats they face out to sea are long-line fishing vessels, which often catch albatrosses accidentally, and the vast amount of waste plastic that makes its way into our oceans. There has been a lot in the news recently about the millions of plastic bags, bottles and other items from our throwaway society. Albatrosses hunt for food on or near the surface of the water, where a lot of this debris ends up, and a floating plastic bag can look remarkably similar to a squid. Albatrosses will dive down and swallow it whole, where it then sits in the bird’s stomach and doesn’t break down or biodegrade. Scientists carrying out dissections often come across birds which stomachs so full of plastic that there is literally no space for anything else.

Better out than in... (Em Witcutt)

One of our young chicks vomited a plastic bag while we were visiting the colony. These are birds that are too young to fly, and so have never left the mountains of Gough. One of its parents must have swallowed a plastic bag and unwittingly brought it back to feed to its chick. It’s shocking to think that even here, in a place so untouched by humans, wildlife is still threatened by us.

Still, it’s not all doom and gloom. The Albatross Task Force is constantly working to help fisheries change the way they fish to reduce the threat to albatrosses, and there are many initiatives around the world to clean up the oceans. People are becoming ever more aware of how our actions impact the world around us, so hopefully our lovely albatrosses will face far fewer threats in the future.

Em