Travels of a Fish Nut

I’m off today for a few weeks on a finfish vessel. It’s a trawler that may target a specific species but often catches a range of species and processes most of them, which means lots of work and hopefully means it should be interesting. So there’ll be silence for a few weeks until I return with hopefully lots of photos of new fish!

On our last day we got to explore some of the history of the island for a change. The original settlement is about half an hour’s walk from the current settlement and on a beautiful day like we had was well worth the trip. The houses were built on stone foundations but were made of wood so that not much is left. There was a small inlet which was used as a harbour and the remains of a warehouse or something can be seen. There was a flagpole and Jenni found that there was a small box containing a Union Jack so she raised it. There was also a visitors book so we all signed it. After an hour or so we wandered back to the settlement and had a bit of lunch before we headed to the airstrip and flew back to real life. It was a fantastic trip and we were incredibly lucky, both with the weather and the amount of wildlife and the island that we got to see in such a short time.

I loved the Rookery and would go back in a heartbeat. The weather was amazing which always helps, but the dramatic coastline combined with the hundred, if not thousands, of albatrosses and a large colony of rockhoppers made it, for me, more enjoyable than the Neck. For me, (and for Gemma - my friend who’s a bird observer and whose job is basically to try and stop albatross from getting killed by longliners) seeing the albatross on land and breeding was an amazing experience. I’m so used to seeing them at sea that to see them up close on the ground was just fantastic. The chicks were so big and fluffy and the adults seemed to be so nonplussed by our presence that you could get incredibly close without causing any (apparent) stress. The nests the albatrosses build are really impressive. They’re made from mud and are perfectly round. The chicks are these big balls of grey fluff which stand up straight at squawk at you if you accidentally get too close. They lie top-to-tail with the paren...

Whenever I told people I was going to Saunders I got asked if I was staying at The Neck. Unfortunately I could never say because on of my friends was organising the trip and I was going wherever we were going. But I gathered from the questions that the Neck was the place to go on Saunders. As it turned out we ended up at the Neck accidentally and I have to say that it was very impressive. The Neck is named because it is a narrow point of land which joins to wider bits of land together. It is basically two beaches and a bit of slightly higher ground in between which is covered in penguins, mostly gentoos and magellanics although there are about 30 kings (and rising). On the hill behind are rockhoppers, black-browed albatrosses and king cormorants. A day was nowhere near enough to properly explore but was sufficient to get a feel for the place. The most abundant penguin was the gentoo, which is my favourite penguin. They are so inquisitive and have so much character. These are a couple o...

This weekend I was lucky enough to go to Saunders Island with three friends. Saunders is an island in the north west of the Falklands with an impressive amount of wildlife. We flew in a tiny plane with only eight cramped seats and there was a gale blowing so the journey of just over an hour was pretty bumpy but luckily no-one was sick! We landed on a grass strip and were greeted by one of the island’s owners and a lot of magellanic penguins which nested nearby. Due to a fortuitous problem which meant we couldn’t spend our first night in the accommodation we’d booked we were taken to the Neck, which is famous for its penguins. The accommodation was a small cabin where we could look out of our window and sea penguins by the hundred! Our second night was spent at the Rookery, where we had originally meant to stay. This was close to numerous black-browed albatross colonies and we could see them soaring in the sky from the window of our house. While the Neck was impressive for the shear n...

The day before mum left we went for a drive around East Falkland. We had been told that the road to Port San Carlos and the road to San Carlos had been recently joined, even though the road was not on the maps, which meant that we would be able to drive in a loop and visit the main settlements on the island. The landscape is very moor-like and roads are very windy and generally not surfaced but they are comfortable enough. This is the view just after we have passed over the hills outside Stanley, heading towards Estancia. Just off the road from where this photo was taken are two Argentinean helicopters that were shelled during the conflict. They are in an increasingly poor state due to souvenir hunters. On the way to Port San Carlos we saw this red-backed hawk sitting beside the road. When we arrived at Port San Carlos we found a very small settlement and nothing really that appeared to be of interest. We asked for directions to San Carlos and then went on our way. To get to San Car...

Volunteer Point is a three hour or so drive from Stanley but the last hour is off-road over moorland reminiscent of Dartmoor or Exmoor. It was a very bumpy ride as we had to steer our way through bogs which often meant taking a very winding route. When we arrived we were confronted by sheep and upland geese and three species of penguins, magellanics, kings and gentoos. As I’ve posted tonnes of magellanic photos already I won’t post any here, but suffice it to say there were lots there. The point is bordered on one side by Volunteer Beach and the other by a lagoon. The bank down to the beach was littered with magellanic penguin burrows to the extent that you had to be careful where you stepped. The gentoos and kings were found along the brow of the point and towards the lagoon, but the breeding colonies were separate and the boundaries were defined by a border of small stones to prevent people from getting too close. When we arrived we headed straight for the kings. The chicks from las...

Mum came and visited me for a week over Christmas. It was really nice to see her and the weather was fantastic which meant we were able to go places. On Christmas Eve we went to Volunteer Point, the largest king penguin colony in the Falklands, and on the Friday after Christmas we went on a drive around the east island, going to Port San Carlos, San Carlos and Darwin.