Travels of a Fish Nut

I'm completely disorganised this year. Not being surrounded by adverts for christmas gifts and not having loads of shops in which to go christmas shopping has meant that I've pretty much ignored christmas until it was too late to do anything. So I just wanted to say MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR Mum is coming for christmas and we'll be going on daytrips around the island so I should have some photos from outside Stanley to post in the new year. In the meantime, I hope you have a fantastic christmas and I will try and write soon.

The cruise ship season has begun with ships stopping in Stanley for a day before heading on down to Antarctica. This morning when I got to work there was a huge ship moored at FIPASS. If I look out of my office window I can see people eating their breakfast in the ship's restaurant. It's all a bit bizarre!

When you think of the Falklands you probably have an image of moorland, hills and rocks. A bare, barren land where nothing except grasses grow and where the weather is dull, grey and windy. Well, I’m writing this post to tell you that if that’s what you think you’d be wrong. I’m sitting, sunburned, in my sitting room writing this and when I look outside there is not a cloud in the beautifully blue sky. Today I went with some friends to Cape Pembroke. It’s just along the coast from Gypsy Cove and is only a ten or fifteen minute drive away from Stanley. There is a lighthouse which provides a good focal point when deciding where to walk. It is an absolutely fantastically beautiful day, a day when you feel good to be alive. We walked along the coast to a beach and had lunch. This is the view from where I sat: We saw lots of different birds. The breeding season is well underway and every pair of upland geese and kelp geese we saw had goslings. The goslings are always grey and we realised...

Gypsy Cove is only a five minute drive from work and so on Friday a couple of friends and I went there for our lunch break. Last time I was there, you may remember, I saw a few penguins. This time I saw LOTS! We were able to get up really close to one of them: As a slight aside, I keep getting asked for more photos of me so I bravely asked one of my friends to take my photo. Here’s the result: After the horror of the last photo I’ll leave you with a nice little bird although I have no idea what it is:

I have been lucky that on this trip I saw quite a few new species, some of which I really wanted to see. The biggest and best are the moonfish ( Lampris immaculatus ) . . . . . . and the porbeagle ( Lamna nasus ) . . . The species I’ve seen most of is the southern blue whiting ( Micromesistius australis australis ) as it was the species we were targeting. I’ve been getting quite a lot of jellyfish, including this one. It’s about the size of a dinner plate! I thought I’d end with a couple of fish which you can tell are definitely deep-sea species. This is the southern driftfish ( Icichthys australis ). The white patches on the body are just where the scales have been lost during the time in the net. Finally, this is Cataetyx messieri. It’s another fish which isn’t exactly pretty but when it’s pitch black looks aren’t really important! I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the animals of the deep (well, 250 – 350 m)!

I'm back. In fact I've been back almost a week but I haven't been in work to be able to get on the internet. I had a great time and have seen some really interesting new species which i'll post photos of in the next few days. But I've got to go and work so it will have to wait for now!

I’m off to sea again today for about three weeks so I won’t be posting for a while. I hope everyone is well and I’ll write when I get back.

The penguins have been returning to Gypsy Cove over the last few weeks and my housemates and I have been trying to get out there to see them. Unfortunately the weather hasn’t been the best for walking around sea cliffs but today the wind died down and so we headed out for a look. We saw penguins! They were mostly on the beach . . . . . . but one on the first we saw was sitting in its burrow . . . We also saw a rock shag colony: We also saw a rock shag colony: And there was a juvenile just below us: It’s really beautiful at the moment because spring has come (although we did have snow this morning!) and the gorse is out in flower. I can’t believe how lucky I am to be here . It’s incredibly beautiful and a ten minute drive from home takes me to see penguins!

We had one day of bad weather and we went and hid in a bay. In the evening we had the opportunity to go to a small island and see some elephant seals that were on the beach. It was absolutely incredible. We didn’t leave our boat (a little dinghy thing, I can’t remember the proper name) but we got close to them all the same. There was a group of fur seals which entered the water once we arrived and swam around and then a small harem of female elephant seals with pups, controlled by a HUGE male. The weather was very calm (despite the bad weather in open water) and it was beautiful. It felt like we were the only people in the entire world. I’ll shut up now and show you the photos! Fur seals: The elephant seals (the male is the one on the far right): Mother and pup: The male: The male with a female and her pup: The view:

I had a fantastic time on the research cruise. It was strange but nice to be working with people rather than alone and even though it was hard work it was interesting. I saw lots of new species, mostly invertebrates but some new fish which was good. I thought I’d show some of the species I saw. One of the most beautiful invertebrates we got was the painted shrimp ( Campylonotus vegans ). It’s found in shallow waters and has electric blue spots on its back. We had a three small octopuses which we kept in a bucket (the ‘save the octopus campaign’!). They were very cute and liked to hide in shells. It’s not a fantastic photo but this is Maurolicus muelleri . It’s a very small fish (less than 6 cm long) but is highly silvered and has photophores along its ventral edge. This is my first flat fish in the Islands. It’s Thysanopsetta naresi and is not commonly caught. This one is of average size, about 16 cm long. This is one of my favourite invertebrates. It’s a basket star, Gorganocephalu...

We got back to land about an hour ago after two weeks at sea. It was fine coming in but we had a snow shower a few minutes ago which was quite bizarre! Once we've unloaded the ship we'll get the rest of the day and tomorrow off so there won't be any posts until next week. But I have lots of photos (including some of mammals!) to show. On a different note, it's mum's birthday this weekend, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!!!

I’m off again this evening for a couple of weeks. It’s a research cruise which is something I’ve always wanted to go on, and I’ll have my birthday on board which will be interesting!

Happy Birthday Jo! It's Jo's birthday (my sister) on sunday and she's going to be 24. Yet again I'm not around and have not got her a present or even a card (I'm a really rubbish sister, sorry). Jo, I hope you have a fantastic birthday. I wish I could be there but I'm sure you're going to have a great time without me.

One of the things I was most worried about when I took the job was not whether I’d be uncontrollably seasick, or whether I’d be able to do the job well, it was whether I’d find enough food to eat on board. As many people asked me what I’d do about the food I thought I’d better tell you. I eat it! The food is fantastic! From what I can gather talking to the other observers the food on the ships is pretty similar and varies only in the skill of the cook rather than the type of food, at least among the Spanish vessels which what I’m on at the moment. There are three meals in the day (unsurprisingly). Breakfast is served around 7.30 am and consists of the most unhealthy food you can imagine: normally biscuits and at the weekends croissants, pain aux chocolate, donuts and these things that look like sausage rolls but are made with sweet flaky pastry and have something akin to nutella inside. On Sundays there are these things that are like thin piped donuts that are very popular. I try and h...

The black-browed albatross is by far the most numerous bird out here at the moment. There are times when there are only a few around but most of the time there are a couple of hundred and there are occasions when the sky seems to be full of them. Most of the time they are really elegant creatures, soaring through the air in complete command of their movements, able to fly mere millimetres from the surface of the ocean even when there is a swell. Because it’s easiest to take photos of them when they are gently soaring through the air it is often easy to forget that they can be quite ungainly at times. When the wind becomes turbulent, which can often happen around the ship, they become almost comical in their attempts to stay aloft. I love watching black-browed albatrosses regardless of what they’re doing, but watching them land can be particularly entertaining. Most of the time they are extremely graceful and land like skilled pilots. But there are times when they are the drunken pilot...

On board a working trawler such as the one I’m on now life is very monotonous. The work is the same every day with no regard for the days of the week. Only two things vary: the catch and the weather. The catch can be good or bad but even that goes in rhythms of good times followed by bad times. The weather is the only unpredictable thing (at least to those of use without access to the weather reports!). There are times when it can be very, very calm. The sea looks like a lake and the boat barely moves. After having got used to the motion of the sea it can be very disconcerting. Most of the time the sea is active without being rough. But there are times when it can get very rough. Strangely this has relatively little to do with the strength of the wind. I’ve known it be Beaufort 8 and terrible and Beaufort 10 and not really that bad. It’s hard to describe what it’s like when the sea is rough but I’ll try. The main motion is from side to side, and this can be up to 25 degrees off the hor...

I’m sorry if I’m seeming a bit repetitive. I’ve shown you more bycatch and now more birds. The thing is that there’s not much else! Still, I think my photos have got better as I’ve learned more about the birds and my camera, and hopefully you’ll think the same too. I’ve got some new birds to show you. This is a cape petrel ( Daption capense ). They seem really small compared to the albatrosses but in fact they have a wingspan of 86cm so are pretty big. They fly in quite large groups and are really cute. They have the most distinctive plumage of any of the birds out here. The second bird isn’t new as such, but the colour is. This is a southern giant petrel ( Macronectes giganteus ) in its white phase. The birds are normally grey or black/brown but go through a phase of being white. I don’t know when or why they do this. If anyone knows I’d love it if you could tell me! This is a grey-headed albatross ( Diomedea chrysostoma ). From a distance they look very like a black-browed albat...