Pegging out in South Georgia

The last two days have been absolutely incredible. The James Clark Ross arrived at South Georgia on Saturday morning, with glorious blue skies and wisps of cloud wreathing the mountain tops. King Edward Point- the BAS research station that we were visiting- lies at the entrance of Cumberland East Bay encircled by a ring of snow encrusted mountains. Grytviken, the old Norwegian whaling station, lies at the foot of the mountains and somehow the sight of these now abandoned industrial remains add a poignancy to the place. More prosaically it’s now a heritage site with a museum (and shop!) that’s open for six months of the year to take advantage of the increased summer traffic.

The Pharos pulling out from Cumberland East Bay

KEP Research Station

 The government officer came aboard and spoke to us about the importance of biosecurity. We were advised to use the boot scrub and the mini vacuum cleaners to clean ourselves of any soil or bits of plant matter; in particular he became very enthusiastic about what we should do if we saw rats anywhere. I think he’s got some traps stockpiled that he’s itching to use!  “Do you feel lucky punk? Well do ya?”

And that was it! We were free to roam. I raced up and downstairs (nearly forgetting money and then how would I have shopped?) but finally escaped and marched around the bay, leaving elephant seals at a very respectful distance. The beaches were littered with the recumbent forms of elephant seals; the males in particular were enormous and they stared with mournful, liquid brown eyes as we passed. If they felt that they were being approached too closely, they reared up, which seemed to require vast amounts of energy from the poor loves, and made loud honking noises.

Elephant seal in the foreground

My goal, however was to make it to Shackleton’s grave. We passed through the whaling station remains and past some King Penguins (I just want to have one, can I have one?) before arriving at Grytviken cemetery. It’s very well maintained; the fence is kept painted and the grave stones are clearly regularly ground but for all that it’s rather a sad place. It’s a monument to men who pursued a very dangerous trade (whaling) and all too often died very young. I think the youngest person in there was just 19 years old when he died. Shackleton’s grave lies at the back of the cemetery and there is a handsome granite headstone marking the site. On the back of the stone are carved lines by Robert Browning “I hold that a man should strive to the uttermost for his life’s set prize.” It’s all very glorious.

Off to Shackleton’s right lie the ashes of Frank Wild who was the man who remained at Elephant Island in charge of 22 men whilst Shackleton sailed for South Georgia in the hopes of bringing back rescue. The fact that those 22 men survived in such a desolate place is testament to Frank Wild’s leadership and he is one of the few men to receive the Polar Medal with four bars.

So, out came the bottle of brandy that my lovely other half had purchased for me “just in case it gets cold” and we toasted men who were clearly absolutely nuts but heroic with it. And then we did explorer poses.

Just before brandy...

It’s possible to scramble up the hillside behind the cemetery to a reservoir which at this point in the year is still mostly frozen over. I regret to say that childishness ensued. Snowballs were thrown; naturally the boys started the hostilities. Kerri and I maintained an alliance and at one point there was a male-female cold war that developed. I armed up- simply to maintain the peace and be ready should I be attacked- at which point both the boys started making more snowballs. Kerri began stockpiling hers so that if we were attacked we would have a supply of armaments. And then I went for a pre-emptive strike on the grounds that if it’s good enough for all world leaders...it’s good enough for me!

Pre-emptive strike- honest, it's for defence!

 Regrettably I took a snowball to the face, but not before exhibiting some kung fu dodges that would have made Neo proud. Snow angels and sledding on coats happened; I haven’t been this childish in years and it was fantastic! Even if I did have a very wet and cold bottom for the rest of the day.

The Childish Ones; Paul, Kerri, me, Tom

King Penguin

Eventually, hysteria over, we wandered down the hillside to the old whaling station. This time we actually took in the explanatory signs rather than galloping past. Grytviken, at its height, was killing more than 30 whales per day! At the beginning, the whalers didn’t even need to go out in ships, whales inhabited the bay so thickly that they simply shot them from the beach with canons and dragged them ashore. Once on the “plan” the gruesome work of dismembering the carcass would start. Using flensing knives (which look rather like ice hockey sticks) the skin and blubber would be cut away from the whale until hooks and winches could be attached to the blubber. The winches would then pull the blubber from the whale’s body so that it could be rendered down and made into all manner of useful things- like lamp oil or margarine in World War II. The meat was utilised as meal to feed cattle and dogs and whale bone was used much in the way that plastics are used now; ladies wore whalebone corsets, men wore it in collar stays. It was even used in type writers.

Flensing Knives

By the end of the whaling period at Grytviken in the 1960s, the bay was stained with blood and effluent from the whales. It took years for the waters of the bay to return to the peaceful blue that they are today. The whale stocks still haven’t recovered.

So in a rather pensive frame of mind, I wandered about the museum until the spirit of commerce captured me and I plunged into the shop. I’m now the proud possessor of a South Georgia hoodie (no hugs please, David Cameron) and postcards featuring pictures from the Shackleton expedition. I was given tea and cake by the rather lovely lady who runs the museum and shop and met the boating officer from the research station. I have to admit to being slightly disappointed; despite winter having only just finished he didn’t have a wide-eyed thousand yard stare or an enormous beard. He seemed terribly normal in fact! But I was reassured by him that even in winter South Georgia still has ships coming in every six weeks and so they haven’t been totally isolated.

My new hoodie! Commerce achieved!

We had a lovely evening; we hosted the men and women of the research station aboard the JCR and then, whilst I was receiving a tour of the station from my opposite number, the party moved to the bar of King Edward Point. There was some crazy dancing, strobe lighting and earnest chatting. I had a wonderful time and then a Cinderella moment as I suddenly realised that it was about 4am and I was the last person from the boat still at the KEP bar and they were trying to clear up...I slunk back to the ship, pegged in (ship’s peg board to say who’s aboard) and pegged out.

Seals and whales and...venison?

According to one of our scientists, the water is 1 degree Celsius at the moment. When I was still but a bairn and very much used to American beaches and the laughably naive notion that a visit to the beach should not be character building, my mother used to take us to the beach at Whitstable for a paddle in the Channel.  I mention this purely to indicate a sense of scale. This is simply to advise people that I know parky, and the water here is damned chilly. It is so cold, in fact, that a person who fell in probably shouldn’t embark on any particularly long thoughts. Which makes it all the more remarkable to consider that life isn’t simply clinging on but rather thriving here. Or at least it does until humans come along and mess about with things.

I went up onto monkey island this evening and within the space of an hour I spotted seals, endless seabirds and what must have been a huge pod of whales.

Whales blowing off steam

 Unfortunately the whales were rather shy and all that I managed to see was a rather coy glimpse of flipper and plumes of spray being released into the air as the whales surfaced to breathe. Earlier, the scientists spotted some rather hapless looking penguins being carried out to sea by their iceberg and apparently a humpback whale surfaced right next to the boat!I think one of my favourite things to consider is the way that animals that look so ungainly and ungraceful whilst on land turn into sleek and elegant predators once in the water.

Another one of those ungainly creatures...the greater spotted scientist...

 

My first seal!

It will be breeding season for the Elephant seals when we arrive at South Georgia tomorrow and I’m told that they will be on the beaches in their multitudes. We were shown footage of a South Georgia beach and I was forcibly reminded of holiday makers as the seals lolled on every spare bit of sand, farting and burping constantly. But once they get into the water, they turn into swift and smooth hunters, every muscle under perfect control.  I can’t wait to see them in action.

The trick however, is not to be too close to the action. Elephant seals are huge and during the breeding season are grumpy devils. The ones to really watch out for though are the fur seals. Their breeding season is slightly later in the year and things can really get interesting when the males are around. Their minds are addled by the vast amounts of testosterone pumping through their systems during mating season and they become extremely territorial. I have been told that they started putting up fencing to separate the research station from the beach because of one male who laid claim to the territory between two buildings which made trips outside rather more exciting than was hoped for! These darlings move fast and seal bites tend to be nasty. Their mouths are absolutely filthy and as I’ve already shared with all of the crew and scientists, if anyone gets bitten they’ll need a thorough washout and a course of antibiotics at the very least. Ouch!

Whilst the wildlife on South Georgia is flourishing, it is a very delicate balance. Human interventions have been altering the very fragile ecosystems present on South Georgia for years. Whalers in the 1800s and early 1900s hunted whales in the southern Atlantic almost to the point of extinction. Now that whaling has been banned, their numbers are recovering but only slowly. Seals were likewise hunted but their numbers have recovered rather more swiftly than the whales as they breed more rapidly. Both are reliant on the krill (tiny, shrimp like organisms) and you can imagine that seal success may come at the expense of the whales. Particularly as krill numbers can easily be adversely affected by the warmth of the oceans.

Man also introduced rats and mice inadvertently onto South Georgia. Rats are cunning little souls and it’s fair to say that they’ve had a field day with seabirds that are not used to defending their eggs and young from land based predators. An enormous eradication programme has been carried out recently to remove the rats but all it would require to restart the problem is for one fishing vessel or research vessel to be less than scrupulous in its attention to detail for the problem to resurface.

This is why, of course, that our exciting day at South Georgia will start with a biosecurity lecture from the government officer. We will be thoroughly cleansed to make sure that we are not bringing foreign species ashore in the form of plant seeds stuck in Velcro fasteners or bacteria in the soil clinging to hiking boots. Rather sadly, South Georgia used to have a herd of Reindeer that were brought over by whalers. They were culled after 100 odd years of inhabiting the island because they were trampling the burrows and nests of the seabirds that are native to the island. From a strictly rational point of view, this does make sense but on a purely superficial note, I can’t help but feel that this is rather a shame as they must have looked beautiful. And venison is never to be sneezed at.

First Icebergs!

Hello and greetings! My apologies for not posting yesterday; I managed to exhaust myself and was tucked up in bed (and no doubt snoring) by nine o’clock! I do snore; it happens, I think, when I’m so tired that my soft palate simply can’t be bothered to maintain muscle tone and instead flutters about like a sheet in the wind. My other half likes to pretend that I make occasional lady like snuffles, but having woken myself on occasion, I like to think of them as a full-on throaty roar.

But why, I hear you asking, was I so tired? Well, the patchwork blanket that I’m making for the friend and colleague who will be in Rothera is proceeding full-throttle, and yesterday I had reached the quilting stage. So I spent most of yesterday, hunching over this blanket, picking out a dragon-fly motif in white cotton thread and swearing fluently and enthusiastically. I haven’t ever reached the quilting stage of blanket creation before and I find that the creative process is helped immeasurably by free-flowing invective. I also hadn’t realised that apparently when quilting, an embroidery hoop is necessary to stretch the material taut and make it easier to sew...so I’ve improvised and stretched the blanket over the bed-rails of my hospital trolley instead. Definitely not strange!

There was a great deal of excitement today however. We have spotted our first ice berg! And then our second! At breakfast this morning, we were told that there was an ice berg over the starboard (that’s right as the ship goes forward) side so we all scurried outside into a rather bracing wind. There, in the distance, gleaming whitely against the grey seas, was our ‘berg. Its peaks were sharply pointed and it looked suitably craggy as the morning sun gleamed off it.

 I took hundreds of photos (actually hundreds; I’ve spent the last hour editing- read deleting- them) and then returned to my cabin for a shower. This was slightly awkward as our giant steward hammered on the door minutes later to let me know that there was another ice berg off the port side. I poured myself into my warm outdoor gear, and mindful of my wet hair, put my buff and my hat on and raced outside. Well. It was beautiful. Like someone had carved a chunk from the white cliffs of Dover and dropped it into the ocean. It was bizarre to see something that vast, that enormous, floating so serenely and calmly on these rough seas. It was still more astounding to consider that the greater part of its mass was lurking beneath the waves.  Apparently the largest iceberg on record was 31,000 square km spotted in the Southern Pacific in 1956. That iceberg would have been larger than Belgium!

I decided to loiter outside for awhile with my camera. Whenever possible, I like to kid on that I might actually know what I’m doing with the thing. I went up to our top deck- monkey island- and took photos of the bow of the ship crashing through the waves. The volume of spray raised is phenomenal. As the ship moves through the water, all the cold air rushes along the lower deck, hits the glass windows of the bridge and is forced upwards onto monkey island. I can say now, with the benefit of experience that sticking one’s face over the parapet and into that stiff breeze is definitely unwise! It’s about 2 degrees Celsius out there at the moment but the windchill makes the temperature feel significantly lower; I went inside fairly swiftly in case I had to email my boss and say that I was really sorry but I seemed to have frost bite...

I didn’t disappear before I had taken many, many photos of the scientists and crew hard at work though. I do like to watch other people working. I was very impressed by their stoicism as within the space of an hour it snowed, hailed and then became sunny. But always complete with a howling wind. Mum...send earmuffs!

Apparently seals fart. A lot.

A holiday feeling has prevailed today aboard the good ship James Clark Ross. The conditions have been so choppy and the weather so bad that the order came from above to give the science stations a miss. Trying to winch rather heavy bottles and bits of gear into the ocean is fairly tricky even when the ocean isn’t doing its best to clamber inside the ship because it hears that the decor is just so fabulous!

Scientists have therefore been wandering about with a strangely lost look all day. Their day usually starts at 4am with the first set of data collection, so I think the majority of them were thrown by the unaccustomed amounts of sleep! This was not my problem. I played yet another fun round of “Guess that Noise and Name that Annoying Rattle!” and spent the night wrapping clothing around everything metallic in my cabin. Why do I own so many metal things? Thus when 7.00 rolled around, I grunted obscenities at my phone and snivelled into my pillow.

But, today I’ve heard a confirmation of some rather exciting gossip. Our itinerary has always said that we will make port at the Falklands and then re-supply Signy and Rothera. The Shackleton has the job of re-supplying Halley, King Edward Point (that’s South Georgia) and Bird Island. But apparently we’ve made such good progress on our jaunt south that we have an extra day before we need to get into the Falklands. So we may be going to South Georgia after all! Even better, we may be getting off the ship and going for a look around!

I am so excited. I didn’t mention this rumour when I first heard it because frankly this ship is a hotbed of rumours and misinformation. I thought it was immeasurably better to pretend to myself that really I didn’t care if we got to go ashore at South Georgia. I was totally indifferent to the thought...Hah! This is immense!

Do you know what’s at South Georgia? That’s right. Penguins, absolute boatloads of penguins. Oh, and seals and sea birds and every other smelly farting thing that you can think of!  I can’t wait. The bit that I’m most hopeful of seeing is Ernest Shackleton’s grave. For those who don’t know, Shackleton was part of the “heroic age” of exploration. Men like Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton went south to Antarctica to explore the continent ostensibly in the name of science and possibly in a spirit of jingoism. Whatever their motivations, what seems certain is that once they had been South, they were powerless to resist going back.

The story of Shackleton’s most famous venture, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition is fairly well known. Mere days before the outbreak of World War I, Shackleton’s team received a fairly laconic telegram from the Admiralty telling them to “proceed” and so they set sail in the Endurance. Whilst navigating the Weddell Sea, the ship became stuck in pack ice, which eventually crushed her leaving the men of the expedition no choice but to decamp to the ice floes. When the ice began to break up, Shackleton ordered his men into the three life boats and they made their way to Elephant Island- an inhospitable place that they only reached after 5 exhausting days at sea.

Elephant Island wasn’t on the main shipping routes, so Shackleton picked a group of men to make the further journey to South Georgia where a whaling station was known to exist. This nautical jaunt, a mere 720miles in open life boats with a sextant as the only navigational aid, was performed and his men arrived on South Georgia.

Sadly, the poor beggars were on the wrong side of the island, so they had to cross 32miles of mountainous terrain with 50ft of rope and a carpenter’s adze between them. Apparently they drove screws into their boots so that they would work as climbing boots.

They made it across and Shackleton’s men back on Elephant Island were rescued  four months later by a Chilean captain, Louis Pardo and a British whaling vessel. No man was lost. Not a man died. Isn’t that extraordinary? So, in the words of another famous explorer, Apsley Cherry-Garrard,

“For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organisation, give me Scott...for a dash to the Pole and nothing else give me Amundsen and if I am in a devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.”

Shackleton died of a heart attack in 1921 in South Georgia, whilst trying to launch another Antarctic expedition. His wife requested that he be buried there. To be able to see his grave and pour a tot of whiskey for the man...well that would be a fine thing.

It's a little bit windy out there...but the science must go on!

 

 

 

Albatrosses...albattri? And the dangers of pub quizzes.

A glorious own goal was perpetrated by myself this evening. As I’ve written in previous posts, I’ve started up a pub quiz and a film night with the idea of keeping people in good spirits. Helping to maintain morale is an important part of my job. People who are busy and contented experience far fewer health problems. The psychological aspects of being so far away from home and working nearly every day also need to be countered. Hence the pub quizzes.


Now, it should not be imagined that my audience are a passive one, inclined to take the loss of a point or two on the chin. There is cheating, (I actually saw one team sneak to the bar to look at a bottle of Tabasco to check where it’s made! I was shocked.) there is bad sportsmanship and there is heckling. I have to rule this turbulent crowd with an iron first. My co-presenter Paul had set an unwise precedent by giving this motley crew half points for spurious answers. So I found that I had to be very specific with regards to what answers I would tolerate and not tolerate. And so, when asking the question,


"What did Alfred Kinsey become famous or infamous for studying?"

I uttered the immortal line, “Human sexual behaviour. I will accept sex.”

Immediate howls of laughter. I have to admit, many of them were my own.  What a massive own goal! It immediately went into the quote book that lives in the bar. This book is disguised as an atlas, but is actually a repository for all the splendidly foolish or witty things that people have said over the years. I’ve already contributed one or two entries. Amongst the best are:

1. “Apart from sinking, we’re doing really well!”
2. “How deep is the 6000m station?”
3. After a scientist had drunk too much “He had structural failure of the body.”

There are smuttier ones, but I won’t sully the internet with such filth. No really.

The weather has certainly changed in the last two or three days. It’s astonishing to think that three days ago, I was sitting outside slathered in factor 50 and prodding my skin anxiously every five minutes to check that I wasn’t burning. Yesterday we had another drill and it was a trifle brisk waiting for commands to come in over the radio! The water is a little wilder too. It’s not the friendly bright blue calm water of the tropics. This stuff is stern, grey waves that lash against the sides of the ship and make her creak.

Apparently we’re headed for some bad weather on Monday which should help me to refresh my bumper crop of bruises! Although I have since learned that if my mattress is sliding about in the night, I should shove a pillow down between the mattress and the wall, and it will stop that. I’m not sure that anything on earth will stop me from walking into walls though. Some things are just impossible.

 More excitingly I saw my first albatross yesterday! I took vast numbers of photographs. I tend to go for quantity over quality with my photography technique. I feel that if I take a hundred photos, one might be decent!

 

I also saw a really rather exciting bird; it looked like a black gull that was wearing white goggles. I’ve no idea what it’s called, but if anyone is wiser and more knowledgeable than me on the subject of sea birds, please let me know!

Smoking and GUM

As many people would probably be willing to bear out, I’m not the world’s most tactful person.  Possibly a terrier with a rat is a better description. So the provision of public health advice and education whilst on board ship has been a tricky subject. In every workplace I’ve seen co-workers smoking or struggling with weight issues, but not only did I not live with those people, I wasn’t their doctor.

I try to be aware that there is a fine line to walk between actively promoting good health and simply being annoying. People are very accepting of my sobriety whilst at the bar (I am going to be such a light weight in Stanley!) but I imagine that might change if they were worried that their alcohol consumption was being watched or their “fresh air” breaks were being totted up. It’s important to switch the doctor brain off at these times; people who don’t want to stop smoking aren’t going to simply because I harass them in the bar.

The bar on the James Clark Ross

 

 

A darts board on a ship feels like the definition of optimism

I’ve also learned to recognise the “buts”. The people who button-hole me in the bar to inform me that they really would engage with smoking cessation or some other change, “but”... When I’ve provided the tenth solution in a row to someone who is telling me that they “would have stopped smoking but...” I realise that they aren’t really looking for assistance with smoking cessation; they’re looking for absolution. Does that sound horribly unsympathetic? It’s not meant to; it’s simply that I can’t force someone to change if they don’t actually want to.

Imagine, therefore, my deep and unreasoning joy when some poor beggar unwittingly released the full force of the Helen-educational-urge upon himself. All he said was that he understood that lungs repaired themselves fully if you stopped smoking by a certain age and I was away. I was drawing graphs, waving my hands in the air, the scent of a convert in my nostrils. He egged me on; there’s no other way to describe it. We passed swiftly from the benefits of smoking cessation to discussion of the two-hit hypothesis in cancer generation. From there we spent a brief but enthralling interlude with blood transfusions before moving on, I know not how, to the lush fields of sexual health.

Sexual health education is a personal pet peeve. It is such an incredibly vulnerable area of people’s lives and has the potential to make people deeply unhappy. It follows therefore that when I have the opportunity to disseminate (pun intended) information about sexual health, I seize it with both hands (stop giggling at the back). I waxed lyrical about the various different conditions and their symptoms. I expounded on contraception. Finally I explained that for good sexual health, it is highly advisable to visit a GUM clinic between sexual partners. And then I turned around and found the senior officer gazing at me with an expression of utter bemusement, no doubt wondering why on earth I had turned the bridge into a sexual health lecture theatre. Ah...I’ll just be...that is to say...heading downstairs then...sorry Boss.