Travels of a Fish Nut

I've been really lax in posting over the last couple of months. Breaking my camera has meant no pictures and not much has really been going on. I've been camping a couple of times now that summer is coming which was really great fun (although the first time we went walking and came back to find one of the tents had blown away. Luckily it was found a few days later without too much damage!). Anyway, I'm heading home for christmas on tuesday and will be back in the UK until the 7th January. I'll try and catch up with as many people as possible. I'm really looking forward to going home but the timing is pretty bad - summer has finally arrived and the sun has been out in force recently! But instead of getting to enjoy long summer evenings sat on the beach I'm heading back to winter. I think I must be mad!

This is predominantly for my mum (hi mum!) but I thought I'd be cheeky and write this here so everyone can see. . . I have a wishlist on Amazon (just put in my yahoo address or my name to find my list). It's got loads of books on there that I want, as well as some DVDs and CDs. So if you're stuck for a christmas present or belated birthday present (hint, hint!) then this would be a really good place to look. I'm coming home for christmas so sending stuff to my UK address is fine and much cheaper in terms of posting. So now there shouldn't be any 'I didn't know what to get you' excuses for not getting me presents!!

Monday was my last chance to combat my new-found fear of elephant seals. One of the guys I’d been chatting with on Saturday night told me how to watch their behaviour and recognise when I was getting too close so I headed straight for the beach after breakfast. I tried getting close but found it really hard. Just having one nonchalantly look at me made me feel nervous. Luckily the guy who’d given me the advice was on the beach and let me join him so I got a master-class in elephant seal behaviour. We got close to a female and pup on the edges of a harem and she raised her head and bared her teeth at us so we stopped. He said about how to let them see you and approach slowly, letting them realise you weren’t a threat. Once she got used to us we crept forward and got some great shots of her and her pup. There were a few satellite males around, including one that decided to come up really close to us. Seeing 4 tonnes of blubber, muscle and teeth thundering towards you is enough to weaken ...

Well, I didn’t get up to as much as I’d hoped today. I could blame the weather (it’s just started snowing again) but in reality it’s because I stayed up all night drinking with a couple of the guys at the lodge and didn’t get to bed until after breakfast! It was a great night, sitting and chatting about anything and everything. Come six o’clock the guys called it quits but I knew if I went to bed now I’d just sleep and miss breakfast then feel awful so I stayed up. The day had begun but it was snowing heavily. There’s a couple of gentoo colonies less than a minute away from the lodge so I went out to have a look at them. It was like being in the Antarctic! It felt like a blizzard, with the wind whipping at my coat and my vision blurred by the snow. The snow was settling on the penguins (and on me!) and they looked miserable. Despite the weather there were still some penguins trudging to and from the sea. After about 10 or 15 minutes my hands were frozen despite wearing gloves and I ...

Southern elephant seals ( Mirounga leonina ) are the largest seals in the world. The females grow to 4 m in length and the males to 6 m*. That’s 3 tall men laid in a row, but even that doesn’t convey their size because it’s not just their length that’s important – it’s their girth. These males can weigh up to 3.5 tonnes* which, while I can’t think of a good comparison off the top of my head, is a lot. Females weigh about a quarter of the weight, but this is still around a tonne! When it comes to this sort of wildlife the figures are usually abstract because the closest you get to them is sitting in your living room watching David Attenborough talking about them on the TV. Today those figures became a lot more real to me. . . It’s my first day on Sea Lion Island and after lunch I took a walk to the beach where there are southern elephant seals breeding. I’ve seen them before, this time last year from a zodiac but this was the first time I got to walk on the same beach as them and, belie...

Sea Lion island is an island to the south of East Falkland. There is a lodge for visitors and that’s about it in terms of human occupation. It used to be a sheep farm but the sheep have recently been removed in an effort to conserve the tussock which is an important habitat for native birds. It’s one of the islands I’ve been most interested in visiting and I decided that as a birthday present to myself I’d take the long weekend to finally stay there. It’s a short (40 minute) flight from Stanley and was much smoother than I was expecting (gale force winds had been predicted but didn’t seem to materialise). The lodge was fantastic and after tea, biscuits and a quick talk about the islands I headed out. My main experience of that afternoon is detailed in the next post but I did see other things, amongst which were this striated caracara (Phalcoboenus australis): and this black-throated finch (Melanodera melandera melanodera): The striated caracara is also known as a ‘johnny rook’ but I ...

I got back from my first trip on Friday but went away for the weekend, hence the delay in posting. The boat was really nice and the catches were generally interesting. I didn’t get much new stuff and as my camera broke early on I don’t have any photos really to show. However, I did get one animal whose rareness of appearance in catches meant I borrowed a camera to document its presence, and that’s what I wanted to write about here. Before I start I want to preface this by saying that it is incredibly rare for boats around the Falklands to catch this animal. My boat has been fishing here for about 6 years and it’s the first one it’s ever had. No one else I’ve spoken to has had one, so while it’s really sad, it’s a rare event and should be taken as a chance event rather than an inevitable consequence of fishing. So by now I’m sure you’re wondering what on earth I’m on about. I’m on about a sea lion (Otaria byronia). We were fishing in international waters well away from land which makes ...

The L.A. natural history museum is quite small, particularly when compared to the British one, but it was good all the same. There was a butterfly pavilion when we went with lots of species native to the US as well as some exotics. This is a Spicebush swallowtail ( Pterourus troilus ): And this is a Julia ( Dryas iulia ): The museum focused on north american species, as you might expect for a county museum. They had a great exhibition showing the work occurring on a T. rex fossil that is being prepared for display. My favourite piece, however, was not part of a gallery or exhibition at all, it was in one of the entrance halls. It was an oarfish ( Regalecus sp.). It was found floating off Catalina island in the late '70s nearly dead. It's a huge fish and the species is thought to be the source of stories of sea serpents. They're beautifully coloured when alive but preservation causes them to become dull. The most interesting thing to me was the shape of the pelvic fins w...

The UCLA botanical gardens are open to the public but aren't very well signposted. They are on the edge of the campus and are fantastic. There were some incredible plants . . . . . . but the best bit was seeing hummingbirds. They were, as you might expect, pretty difficult to photograph. The only time it was possible was when they briefly rested on a branch. Near the street exit was a relatively open area with grass and trees. There were about a dozen squirrels around and they were really tame, getting very close if you let them. They were really cute!

The Getty Center is an amazing complex set high in the hills surrounding L.A. I was a bit ambivalent about going because while I like art I wasn't sure if I could spend an entire day looking at pictures. In fact I was much more than just an art gallery and I could have spent days there. The first thing that strikes you, even before you arrive, is the complex itself. I know nothing about architecture yet even I can tell that it is an architectural marvel. The buildings seem to frame each other and the white marble is stunning against the everpresent blue sky. We decided to go a highlights tour which went around the four main collections and went into detail about one piece in each collection. We then had lunch and afterwards we had a look at a special exhibition taking place on a 17th century female artist called Maria Sibylla Merian who produced scientific drawings of plants, birds and insects and discovered that caterpillers metamorphose into butterflies. The artwork was stunning ...

I'm flying to the Falklands via Chile tomorrow. The route isn't one I'd have chosen voluntarily as it takes loads longer than flying via Brize Norton and the luggage allowance is puny in comparison. But there aren't any Brize flights until mid- september and I've got to start earning money again so off I go. The route takes me to Madrid airport, Santiago airport and then Punta Arenas where I'm stopping for a couple of nights to recoup before the final leg to the Falklands. As I've not really recovered from getting back from L.A. I thought the stop was necessary. The point of this is that although as far as this blog's concerned I'm still in L.A. the next post about said city will in fact be posted from Stanley. I'm just getting a bit behind in my online diary! So I will write about the Natural History Museum and the Getty Center but it will have to wait until I've caught my breath after all this flying!

The La Brea tar pits are near Beverley Hills and were the first of three tourist attractions Sarah and I went to. They were really good. The outside part reminded me a lot of Rotorua, but instead of smelling of sulphur it smelt of warm tarmac (unsurprisingly really!). The tar pits have been trapping animals for tens of thousands of years. There are models of mastodons about to walk to their death in the main pit which has a layer of water over the tar. One of the pits is being excavated and you can watch. It’s only excavated during the summer because the warmer temperature makes it slightly easier to work although it’s still solid. There are loads of macrofossils but they have become increasingly interested in the microfossils such as rodent teeth and plant pieces which can provide a lot of information about the environment back when they were deposited. The museum is well-stocked with fossils. The highlights are sabre-tooth cats (not tigers), mastodons and dire wolves. These wolves w...

I went to L.A. for ten days to visit Sarah and to go to Mary’s wedding. I had a fantastic time, saw some of the sights and did far too much shopping! I flew with Air New Zealand which was weird but good. It was strange seeing the ‘Welcome to Auckland’ film which brought back loads of memories and made me quite homesick. We flew via Greenland and Arctic Canada. It was amazing seeing the icefields, glaciers and icebergs. Much of Canada was brown rather than white. I’m hoping that that was a normal view for this time of year – I’m pretty sure that Hudson Bay melts in summer. It was striking all the same. As it was summer it was daylight all the way and I had a window seat so sleeping was difficult! I really wanted to see Hudson Bay but it was taking ages to reach it and I finally decided to try and close my eyes. When I awoke we were over the mid-west! We flew over the Hoover Dam and near the Grand Canyon. The landscape was amazing. The rocks were different colours and there were canyons...

My uncle Dave has taken me on holiday several times while I was a poor student and now I’m earning (yay!) I thought I’d try and repay him, so I took him to London for his birthday. We went to the British Museum and the Proms. I had a great time and I think (I hope) Dave did too. We went to the Hadrian exhibition which was fantastic. It went through Hadrian’s life showing statues, models and various other artefacts. They had some Vindolanda tablets which are some of the earliest examples of cursive script. They’re really just everyday notes – lists, bills, short notes – and show the everyday life of people up at Hadrian’s Wall. It’s strange how the everyday, throwaway things really connect you to people who lived almost 2,000 years ago much more than the big monuments that they left behind. It makes them more real somehow. After we saw the exhibition we had a look around the Assyrian, ancient Greek and Roman stuff. The Assyrian section began with wall panels from a palace at Ninevah whi...

Back in July Mum and I went to Bath for the day. We went to the Abbey and the Roman Baths. The abbey was really good. It was pretty much like any ancient abbey with an impressive nave, magnificent west window and effigies around the place. My favourite window was one showing the crowning of king Edgar. I don’t really know much about him but I think he was king a long time ago. After the abbey we went to the Baths. It was good, but very expensive. I’d recently read a book called ‘The Economic Naturalist’ by Robert Frank. It was all about why things cost what they do and why we pay more for certain things than others. It made me think about the cost of the Baths and why they were so high when it didn’t seem to have changed that much since I went there with school over a decade ago. I think it’s because it’s a huge tourist attraction which is internationally famous and full of overseas tourists. If you’ve paid £700 to get to Bath then £12 or however much it was isn’t really that much. It...

My aunt and uncle, Betty and Ray, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this weekend. Fifty years together and still going strong. Congratulations! I hope you have many more happy years together. They had a party on Saturday night and I wore a dress. Yes, you read that right and it wasn’t a typo! For the first time in about 8 years I wore a dress and here’s the proof: See, I am a female really!

When I was a kid, maybe six or seven, I went to a castle which had a dungeon and a kitchen with a pyramid-shaped block of sugar and sugar-cutters. I’ve always wondered where that castle was and on Thursday I found out – it was Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. Berkeley Castle is a nine-hundred year old castle which has been lived in by the same family for its entire history. The family has been involved in some big moments in British history including the murder of Edward II, the signing of the Magna Carta and the Civil War. In fact there is part of the external wall which was blown up by Cromwell during the Civil War. Some deal was done by the steward in charge of the house that allowed the castle to remain neutral if the wall was not rebuilt. The deal became law so that even today, if the wall is rebuilt the army is legally entitled (if not obliged) to blow up the castle. It’s rules like this that make our country what it is today! Anyway, the castle was fantastic. We had a tour wh...

The weather has been a bit iffy recently but the forecast looked good on Tuesday so mum and I went to Kew Gardens. We were really lucky with the weather and had a fantastic time. There was more to see than we had time or energy for but what we did see was amazing. It was really nice to see flowers! We saw the Temperate House first and it was huge! There was a walkway around the main section of the house which was really high and gave a very different perspective on the plants. There is a palm at the centre of the house which is the tallest indoor plant in the world. We went around the 'rhizotron and xstrata treetop walkway' next. I have no idea what the name is about but it was amazing. It involved climbing up a set of stairs which led to a walk in the treetops and gave a fantastic view of the grounds and a unique view of the trees around which the walkway was built. The palm house was next. It has palms and flowers from different regions. The palms were huge and the plants we...