Notes from South 2010

Jonathan Shanklin's visit to South Georgia in 2010

 For this trip my destination was King Edward Point, on South Georgia in the South Atlantic.  Here I was to inspect and carry out some maintenance of the AWS at our climate station, which has a record going back to 1905, and to install a new instrument that measures precipitation using a laser beam.  This will give us the first continuous record of the precipitation at the station.  For sidelines I was commissioned to collect some liverworts, to assess potential sites for launching weather balloons and to give an interview to a film crew.  

I left Cambridge for RAF Brize Norton with a colleague from BAS on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 20th.  On arrival at Brize we were told that the departure was delayed from 23:30 to 01:30, and the plane (a rather anonymous white Airbus, with a CS registration and crewed by a Portugese crew from HiFly) eventually departed at 02:30.  We were then informed that our first stop was Lisbon, apparently for a crew change and refuel!  After this our next stop was Ascension Island and then Mount Pleasant Airport in the Falklands.  The in flight cruise was fairly slow, and by the time we had recovered suitcases and been driven the 30 miles to Stanley it was getting on for 22:30, rather than the normal mid-afternoon.  Our accommodation was Shorty's Motel, but there was no-one to welcome us, so we guessed that the rooms with open doors were for us.

Our departure was scheduled for the Sunday, so I had a couple of free days, and fortunately the weather was fine.  I first called at Falkland Conservation to confirm arrangements for carrying out some botanical surveying in the local area, then checked for any orders at the BAS office, and purchased supplies for a packed lunch from West Store.  The surveys were to cover previously unrecorded monads, some of which had interesting plants.  I decided first to visit an area east of Stanley airport, which might contain Dussen's Moonwort and Spider Plant.  This was around 7km from the motel, so there was a brisk walk along the main road to the airport.  I passed some road closed signs and was eventually accosted by someone asking if I realised that mine clearance was being carried out.  Unfortunately our late arrival had meant that the customary airport briefing had been omitted, so I had to walk back and take the alternative route across the Boxer Bridge and past the Lady Elizabeth.  On arrival in the survey area, covered with dunes and dune slacks, lunch was the first consideration and then I set about refamiliarising myself with the Falkland flora, as I was quite rusty on the local species.  I wandered back and forth in the allocated square, and whilst I didn't find any of the really rare plants did find good quantities of Gaudichaud's Orchid.  After the same walk back I was quite ready for a good meal at Shorty's Diner, served by the very friendly staff.

Saturday was also a fine day, so I walked in the other direction to visit a couple of squares west of Tumbledown.  This was even further, being 9km to the starting point, but the terrain is quite different, with "camp" grassland and the cliffs of Tumbledown.  Once again I didn't find the target species, but did find a few plants of the relatively rare endemic Falkland Rock Cress.  With a long walk back I was again ready for a good meal and an early night.  The forecast for Sunday was not good, and it was raining when the taxi to FIPASS arrived as scheduled.  There we boarded the Pharos SG, the Fishery Protection Vessel that was to take us to South Georgia.  With storm force winds forecast the Captain decided to delay departure till the next morning, so despite sore feet I went for a walk after lunch.  I got about as far as the Boxer Bridge before heavy rain and increasing wind arrived and put the new jacket that I'd purchased before Christmas to the test - it was fine!  I did however decide to return to the ship as there was no prospect for improvement.

We sailed at 6am, and initially spent some time in the outer harbour, before proceeding out and east to South Georgia.  The ship rolled a bit, but it was very comfortable, the wind and swell were not too bad and the cook provided us with large meals.  Despite gloomy predictions from the Captain, Helen was safely dropped off at Bird Island and overnight the ship steamed slowly around to Cumberland Bay.  We moored up at King Edward Point just after breakfast on a hot summers day where the temperature got up to +21°C.  However it got steadily windier and the ship decided to spend a few days in port before resuming her patrols.

Once ashore we got a briefing on base life, before being allowed to start work.  I soon found where the scientific stores were and checked that everything I expected was present.  I first worked on the AWS, and inspection showed a few minor maintenance items were needed.  I started by taking a few pictures, and then doing some gardening - the tussac grass was growing rather too tall around the enclosure, so it was trimmed back a bit.  The next steps had to wait for some dry, calm weather, but this proved in short supply for several days.  When it came I changed the humidity sensor, and dried out the desiccant in the sunshine detector.

Weekends are usually rest days on the station, though I tended to work if there were things to do.  On the first Sunday it was rather too windy to work on the instrumentation, so I accepted an invitation to lunch on the yacht Wanderer, followed by a walk with Kiki to Maiviken to see if we could find an alien plant reported by a Kew team that had carried out a survey in January 2009.  The walk was quite exhilarating, in the strong wind and with driving pellets of snow.  We had a rough idea of where to look and it proved surprisingly easy to find the clump of Mat grass Nardus stricta, which had probably been brought in a by a tourist.  Along the way I found a few liverworts to try my hand at, and also pointed out one of the less obvious vascular plants - filmy fern Hymenophylum falklandicum.  The following weekend we walked out to Hestesletten to try and find another plant - Diddle-dee, which had first been found there in the 1970s, but not seen for many years.  After some searching we found what was now quite a large patch of the plant, though not quite where we had been lead to expect to find it.

Once the AWS work was mainly completed it was time to begin installation of the new laser precipitation sensor (LPS).  The first thing was to remove the old Dartcom weather satellite receiver, which proved relatively easy.  Next I had to pull out the old multi-core cable, and with it pull through new mains and data cables for the LPS.  Again this went very smoothly.  I needed help from Matt, the base mechanic, for the next stage, which was to put up the short mast for sensor, and this also proved straightforward.  Having installed everything I had to wait for some calm weather to connect up the cables, and then the final stage to power up the system.  This immediately tripped the circuit breaker, so I knew something was wrong but what?  The answer was obvious when I looked at the manual - although I had carefully noted the connections, I had them upside down in my notebook!  Once connected correctly the system began to work, and had logged over 125mm of rain, with a little snow by the time we left 16 days later.  

Weatherwise it has been a poor summer, with much cloud, wind, rain and snow.  The logger total during my stay was more than would be recorded in an average February.  Sunshine totals are 25% down on last year.  The wind can cause spectacular effects, and one morning 60 knot gusts were ripping spray off the reservoir that provides our hydro-electric power and creating a mist of spray across Cumberland Bay.  Although I've visited KEP many times, I can't remember seeing it covered with snow, but one storm started with rain and soon turned to snow giving a blanket several centimetres deep.  There were occasional gaps in the cloud, giving brilliantly clear days and star spangled nights.

Station life involves many things out of the ordinary - taking turns at carrying out station checks and cooking for everyone went very smoothly, as we were usually paired up with someone with experience.  I concentrated on "goodies", making some coconut biscuits, flapjack and fudge.  Another involved practicing for emergencies.  One scenario involved a walker who had broken an ankle several kilometres from the station, and needed carrying back for treatment.  The weather was poor, but the team carried out the assigned task without difficulty, putting the patient on a stretcher and walking across steep and boggy ground, before transferring her onto a boat and safety.

Whilst at South Georgia I was filmed by Pilot Productions for a programme they are making.  Their blog tells the story.  I also gave a talk on board the Pharos, so as the Times oceans correspondent was aboard may lead to a further media appearance.  Bridget organised an art exhibition where everyone was given a copy of the South Georgia map and asked to design a piece of artwork.  On viewing day (held under the old meat cookery) each of us had a different inspiration including my conceptual art pieces "one" and "out", origami penguins, miniature otoliths, dragons, collages and an animation with whaling music as a background.

Near the end of my stay I took part in the South Georgia half marathon, which was raising money for conservation work towards rat eradication.  I'd originally only intended to walk half of it at a lesiurely pace, looking for lichens on the Brown Mountain leg, however in company with my "angels", we walked the whole thing, taking 5 hours 45 minutes for the course that took us from sea-level to 300m.  The winners ran the course in under two hours, perhaps sustained by portions of my home made fudge.  For good measure that evening I walked to the Grytviken cemetery and back, adding another 3km to my distance for the day.

As a sideline I hunted for plants and liverworts.  During my stay I added another native to my flora gallery, re-found two aliens, and added another two aliens, one of which was new to the Island.  Liverworts proved rather harder than I'd expected to identify, largely through lack of a workable key to those that grow on the Island, however I collected 44 packets of them to return to Cambridge.

We left KEP slightly earlier than anticipated (its always like that!) on board the Pharos.  Our first stop was Leith Harbour, to check up on the position of warning signs to keep out because of asbestos.  I asked to go with the party to check on alien plants, and in the short time ashore found six, all common, though one was possibly in a new location.  I also found a cupro-nickel spoon, presumably a whalers relic, which I passed on to the Grytviken museum.

Note illustrations are thumbnails, and the full size images can be downloaded by clicking on them.  See also reports on my trips in 2006 and 2008.