Travels of a Fish Nut

We have had a good couple of weeks and have filled the freezers which means we’ve had to come to land to unload. We’re off again later today (Wednesday) and I’m really looking forward to going out again. It feels very strange to be on land, stable, unmoving, land. Coming in to land was really fun. When we left FIPASS (Falkland Islands Port and Storage Services) initially it was the early hours of the morning and I was asleep. We came in early yesterday morning and came in sight of land just after dawn. The weather was gorgeous although it was very cold. It was very nice to see Stanley, and coming in through The Narrows to see the town appear was really cool. Another ship was unloading so we had to wait in Stanley harbour for a few hours. It was quite annoying being so near to land and yet so far. Even if I had the strength to swim to shore I would’nt have tried it as the water was under 4 degrees C! Luckily I was offered the opportunity to come to shore by launch so I got picked up an...

The boat has its clock set one hour ahead of Falklands time, for reasons that elude me. Apparently it’s so that there’s more daylight when people are working, but seeing as they work when there’s work regardless of the hour and most of the work is done in a windowless factory, I can’t see the point other than to cause confusion for me when arranging to talk to people on the radio! However, it does have some benefits. Namely, I get to see the sunrise as well as the sunset, which is quite unusual for me! Sunrise and sunset, dusk and dawn are - there’s no other word for it - magical. There are birds flying around, silhouettes in the pale light, and the sea and sky seem to go on for ever. Here are a few of my favourite photos I thought I’d share with you.

As I’m sure you can imagine, I get to see quite a few seabirds out here in the South Atlantic. I just wasn’t prepared for how many I’d see. There are THOUSANDS. We’re in the Loligo fishing grounds at the moment and it’s pretty much the height of the season so there are quite a few trawlers around, each with their own contingent of seabirds. That makes for a lot of birds. Now, when I say seabirds I don’t mean scrawny seagulls like you get in Weston! Admittedly, there are a few seagulls, but they are vastly outnumbered by the albatrosses. The majority are black-browed albatrosses ( Diomedea melanophris ): but there also northern and southern giant petrels ( Macronctes halli and M. giganteus ) (I can’t tell the difference yet) and cape petrels ( Daption capense ) in abundance. There are also quite a few royal albatrosses ( Diomedea epomophora ) around which amazing and have, according to my bird book, a larger wingspan than wondering albatrosses. Royal albatrosses are huge birds which...

Well, I’ve been on board for almost two weeks, and I’m loving it. The people are really friendly, the food is fantastic and the work is really interesting (most of the time!). Every day is a different, even though the work is always basically the same. There are generally four trawls a day unless there’s a problem but the precise time of hauling varies. This means that that when I work depends on when we haul. I try and work the middle two hauls of the day which generally come in around 11am and 4pm, but sometimes I’m feeling energetic and will work the 6am haul, or work late and do the 10pm haul. The hours I work vary depending on circumstances such as the time they take to process the catch which depends on its size and the amount of bycatch. I’ll talk more about that in the next post. The first couple of days I was sea sick, unable to keep anything down. The sea was rough which didn’t help (Beaufort 8 for a while). But eventually I got better and now it doesn’t bother me at all. One...

The past couple of days have been absolutely fantastic. On Friday night Pablo, the observer I'm sharing the house with at the moment, showed me the local pubs. The pubs are more English than English pubs, with union jack flags all over the place. The smoking ban has not been put in place here so they are very smoky but the drink is cheap so I don’t mind that much! Early in the morning it rained which melted most of the snow. I had a walk around town and saw the mizzenmast from the SS Great Britain! I also saw some very large seabirds which I later identified as southern giant petrels. Apparently they like congregating around the sewage outlets in the harbour! They are huge, grey birds with a wingspan of a couple of metres, according to my bird book. In the afternoon I went for a walk along the Stanley Bypass, the road behind/above Stanley. There are lots of upland geese around, as well as a species of vulture which is black with a red head. I also these birds. I don’t know what the...

I’m here! It’s been snowing and there’s snow flurries every now and then. The sun set well before 5pm and it’s probably only about 0 degrees C. It’s fantastic! The landscape is stark and completely stunning. It’s very flat with jagged rock outcroppings. There are no trees or even bushes that I could see, only grass. Getting here was pretty uneventful. We started taxiing at midnight, only one minute late, and took off just after ten past. We landed in Ascension around 7 am local time (Ascension is an hour behind the UK at the moment), and were there for about an hour and a half. Coming in to land is most disconcerting as there are no signs of life at all. No boats, no islands, nothing. I could easily imagine that we had run out of fuel looking for this dot in the Atlantic and rather than scare us by telling us he was ditching the plane, the pilot decided to lie that we were landing on dry land. Luckily, this wasn’t the case and land did appear, seconds before we touched down! Ascension ...