Travels of a Fish Nut

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 ...