Elephant Seals

After a few days at sea I was glad of the opportunity to go ashore at Signy. During the summer this base is occupied by a small contingent of BAS personnel including a biologist, field assistant (mountaineer), technician, base commander and assorted visiting scientists including glaciologists, microbiologists and climatologists. During the winter it is unoccupied, so at the end of each research season it is closed down and prepared for winter. This includes empting and shutting down frozen food stores, switching off the reverse-osmosis plant that supplies fresh water, winterising generators and communications equipment and even draining the sewage system to prevent damage during the long winter. Fortunately Matt, the base commander, has overseen this process every season for almost 10 years, and has refined it to a slick and efficient operation that can be done over the course of a couple of days with the help of a few of the ships company.

One of the final steps is closing the base is the installation of heavy metal shutters over the windows to prevent storm damage. In order to do this the resident contingent of elephant seals must be herded away from the base. It turns out that this is no easy task.

Until our arrival at Signy my experience of elephant seals had been limited to the occasional encounter on the beaches around Bird Island. Here, amongst the squabbling fur seals, ellies can be found slumbering peacefully, piled together in slug-like heaps of two or three. These are often juvenile males or young females who come ashore to rest or to moult. Their gentle, sedentary nature is very different from the more aggressive furries and I was able to spend many happy times posing for photographs with them, often venturing close enough to stroke their velvety flippers. The elephant seals tolerate drather than enjoyed this attention; watching us with huge unblinking eyes and sighing patiently as we interrupted their quiet meditation on the beach.

Jon displaying some expert seal-wrangling skills

The Signy elephant seals are mainly full-grown males who like to lie in massive heaps pied up against the walls of the base away from the sea-ice and sheltered from the prevailing wind. I was not at all prepared for the enormous size of these beasts, each of which can weigh 3000kg and raise himself up to over six feet high when on dry land. As I rounded the corner of the generator shed I was met by a steaming mountain of seal blubber that periodically re-arranged itself with much bickering, biting and general posturing as each of these potential beach-masters vied for their preferred position. There was an overpowering smell of farmyard mixed with rotten fish and the ground underfoot was slick with with seal scat.

Huge and cumbersome, these animals lack the skeletal articulation that would enable them to sprint across dry land as fur seals can. However, they soon showed themselves able to lunge with surprising swiftness and accuracy when approached too closely. They also displayed a remarkable reluctance to move. In fact, this reluctance would be more accurately interpreted as absolute refusal. A crack team of seal wranglers was soon assembled and we approached the seal-mountain armed with specialised seal-moving equipment. To the untrained observer this may have looked like a bunch of lunatics shouting and clapping while waving flags and bamboo canes. We, however, prided ourselves in our expertise and experience and knew that we represented the world’s elite in terms of seal wrangling. The seals, however, seemed sadly uninformed of this fact and were clearly unimpressed by our efforts. We persisted with shouting and clapping and eventually progressed to poking, prodding and occasionally slapping in order to gain the ellies’ attention. Slowly, grudgingly they began to move. We continued our exertions, working ourselves into a frenzy of yelling, waving and prodding. This was met with distain by the seals, who rolled their huge, liquid eyes in our direction and, insultingly, went back to sleep. Undeterred we redoubled our efforts, by now sweating and steaming in the freezing air. Finally we managed to rouse them from their slumber and persuade them, one by one, to move away from their cosy resting spot. As they lumbered past they shot looks of resentment in our direction, clearly unimpressed by the disruption to their daily routine. Once again I was reminded that the human residents of Antarctica are uninvited guests in a land that rightly belongs only to those who are perfectly adapted to life in this harsh and beautiful environment.

I braced myself against the railings as the deck of the ship rose and fell beneath my feet. Binoculars held firmly in place, I gazed intently at the horizon as the last rays of sun stretched towards me over the rolling swell.  All day we had been making our way through open water, pack ice behind us now. Throughout the morning these Antarctic waters shone cobalt-blue beneath clear skies broken only by the occasional elliptical cloud that hung over the horizon, hinting at the presence of a hidden landfall. Later these clouds seemed to coalesce as we steamed into waters now as grey as beaten pewter.

The sliver of sky above the horizon narrowed and finally succumbed as the sun melted into the water and spread towards us in a burning pool. I pressed the binoculars tight against my forehead so as not to miss a single moment of its passing. The colours deepened as the golden glow became orange and then red, and finally, as I held my breath ‘There!’ a burning emerald on the horizon, a celestial green, more vivid than any earthly hue. For a moment it danced and shone brighter as though fighting to re-ignite. No gentle passage into twilight, but a raging, burning struggle for the skies. As it sank lower it flamed and fought in one final, defiant flare. No longer green, but blue. Ice burned on the horizon and was gone. The sea before us lay grey and scorched. Here and there it reflected the glow of smouldering clouds, which one by one surrendered to the evening that settled softly upon us as though comforting the sea. 

As we waited for the Shackleton to return from South Georgia the weather that had made their journey from the Falklands so uncomfortable brought us an unexpected amount of snow. Unfortunately this was combined with high winds that made working outside all but impossible. When it eventually abated we were able to travel around the island, although progress was hampered by the tendency to get stuck in high drifts and to fall between tussock into waist-deep snow. On the rocky slopes of La Roche and Gazella the wind had sculpted the snow into long, sinuous ridges that glittered in the sunlight and formed deep cornices above the paths.

Eventually the ship returned, though the swell was still to great for her to launch the cargo tender. Over the course of two days cargo was transferred on and off base using smaller boats. It is a credit to the tenacity of the ship’s crew that the relief operations were completed successfully with all supplies apart from a small number of fuel drums being delivered. It was soon time for the departing personnel to be transferred on board. For Ruth this meant the end of two and a half years on the island. Her dedication to her work and to the animals had been extraordinary and it was clearly an emotional wrench for her to leave. Fortunately the prospect of a voyage South to the Antarctic peninsula did go some way towards softening the blow and it was with a sense of anticipation and excitement that Ruth, Jen, Jon, Iain and I boarded the ship.

From Bird Island the Shackleton was bound Signy, a small base in the South Orkney Islands. It was here that we would collect its 5 members of staff and help to close up the station for the winter, during which time it would be unmanned. Signy provides a base for staff studying wildlife (mostly penguins) and also glaciology and climatology.

For the first two days of or trip heavy swell and strong winds made for slow progress. The ship’s crew demonstrated their characteristic hospitality and welcomed us aboard enthusiastically. Unfortunately the Shackleton is notorious for her uncomfortable action in big seas and Jen and Iain were soon laid low by mal de mere. I was more fortunate and found that the bridge offered the best views on board, a good coffee machine and excellent company in the form of the Captain and his officers. This was also the ideal place to be when, a couple of days later, we came to dense pack ice. Earnest Shackleton has an ice-strengthened hull and is ideally suited for breaking her way through the pack. I watched with fascination as her bow rose and fell, carving a path through the ice, which crashed and splintered against her hull. With the ice came wildlife and my first glimpse of leopard seals. These impressive predators are winter visitors to Bird Island, where they can often be seen hunting penguins close to shore. They could be seen from the ship as they rested on the ice-floes, raising their head lazily and fixing us with a crocodilian stare as we passed by. Crabeater and Fur Seals could also slept comfortably on the ice. Often the ship would pass quite near before the seals woke and with a sudden panic, launched themselves into the water to avoid being crushed beneath the hull as we steamed on. Penguins were also thrown into confusion as we approached. The ones we passed now were mostly Adele penguins. Smaller and stouter than the Gentoos who had been our neighbours on Bird Island. Unlike the seals, the penguins were quick to spot the approaching ship. Alarm would spread rapidly through a group as they stood sentinel on the floating ice. Alarm became panic as we came nearer and soon the first penguin would break ranks and make a dash for the water. This lead to complete pandemonium as the remaining birds waddled frantically after them, often falling and sliding on their bellies, a riot of penguins crashing into one another as they sought refuge in the ocean. Generally we came no closer than a few hundred meters to these groups, but still the chaos was the same. Once in the water their confidence was restored and we often saw them porpoising gracefully alongside the ship, hunting for krill and seemingly unperturbed by our presence.

Bird Island

If once you have slept on an island,

You’ll never be quite the same,

You may look as you did the day before,           

And go by the same old name,

You may bustle about in street and shop,

You may sit at home and sew,

But you’ll see blue water and wheeling gulls,

Wherever your feet may go,

You may chat with the neighbours of this and that,

And close to your fire keep,

But you’ll hear ship whistle and lighthouse bell,

And tides beat through your sleep

Oh! You won’t know why and you can’t say how

Such a change upon you came

But once you have slept on an island

You’ll never be quite the same

                                                                        Rachel Lyman Field

The last few weeks of my time on Bird Island passed in something of a blur. Jon was quickly back on his feet following his too-close encounter with an aggressive fur seal and following a couple of weeks confinement he was glad to be back to work. The stitches were removed and his leg has healed well, though it was a salient reminder to us all of the dangers of complacency when working around unpredictable wild animals.

Jon’s recovery saw and end to my time as temporary seal-biologist. I had enjoyed being involved in Bird Island’s science programme and felt that I was becoming better acquainted with our resident seal colony. We had been tracking mothers and pups via radio-transmitters and monitoring their progress as the mothers alternated between feeding their pups on shore and returning to sea on foraging trips. These trips could last up to 7 or 8 days, during which time the pups were left to fend for themselves son the beach or high up in the tussock around base. By this time the pups were becoming enthusiastic swimmers, which often made tracking them difficult. Fortunately they never strayed far from shore and the water in the most popular swimming areas seemed to boil as playful pups tested out their flippers.

My daily excursions to Gazella Peak continued, though visibility was often poor. On many occasions I found myself standing on the cliffs to the North of the Island where the rock dropped dramatically into the sea only to find that the surface of the water was obscured by thick fog. This gave impression that the cliffs themselves descended into some bottomless chasm, perhaps reaching to the very deepest depths of the earth. The muffled cries of albatrosses and turns nesting below drifted up through the fog as though tormented souls were trapped below, pleading for release from the foggy depths.

Back at base we enjoyed the excitement of two visits from RRS James Clark Ross as she made her way past us to the Falklands before heading South again towards the Antarctic Peninsula. Jaume left us during the first of these ships calls, returning to Cambridge to continue his work as head of the Marine Mammals department. This season had been his 10^th trip to Bird Island in as many years and we toasted this milestone on the eve of his departure. He was replaced 2 weeks later but Iain, another Cambridge-based scientist who visited to oversee the last few weeks of the summer’s seal work.  Iain is also a veteran of many seasons at both Bird Island and South Georgia. He proved to be a lively and enthusiastic addition to the base and we enjoyed his stories of life in pursuit of seals and other animals around the world.

Ships calls also brought contact from home in the form of mail, the first that we had received since our arrival. This was particularly welcomed by the wintering members of the team. Long months away from home had left them craving for comforts that came in the form of letters and parcels from home. These contained treasures such as sweets, cookies and other treats including books, movies, music and games to help pass the long winter evenings ahead. Long-awaited lenses and other photography equipment were received enthusiastically and trips to the ridge were hastily arranged to try out new equipment.

Fresh food was also delivered and the team dined heartily on fresh salads, eggs, fruit and vegetables imported from the Falkland Islands. Strict biosecurity procedures were observed to avoid the introduction of alien species and several bugs and spiders were apprehended and detained for return to the Falklands for identification.

On the ridge above the base the Wandering Albatross were busy raising their families. Eggs were hatching and weeks of waiting were over as the chicks appeared. Helpless at first and almost naked, their white fluffy down soon appeared as they snuggled beneath their patient parents. Jen and Steph patrolled the study area daily to record hatching dates and nest failures they carefully compiled their data and entered it into one of the most comprehensive and long-running databases of its type.

As the month progressed I turned my attentions from the animals to the preparation of cargo for export during ‘last call’ when RSS Ernest Shackleton would deliver the last supplies of the year and also collect waste, outgoing cargo and members of the team who were not intending to stay through the winter. This is a time of great excitement and no small measure of apprehension for all base staff. Last call represents the start of the winter season, during which the base will be manned by only four personnel - three scientists and one technician.  In each case this will be their first experience of winter on Bird Island. They will have no physical contact with the outside world until the first ships call of the following summer season – this is likely to be seven months away. While contact with friends and family can be maintained via phone and internet, there will be no mail, no visits and no way off the island. There are no boats at Bird Island and our nearest neighbours on South Georgia do not have a boat capable of reaching us. In the event of dire emergency our only hope is that a fishery patrol vessel would be diverted to rescue a casualty, though in winter this is likely to take days or even weeks. While this isolation persists throughout the year, during the summer season we can  at least be assured of a ship’s visit at least every 3 months. The wintering team do not have this luxury. 

As the Shackleton made her way towards us from the Falkland Islands we tracked her progress through increasingly bad weather.  Eventually her Captain was forced to change plans and make a dash for shelter to the North of the island. As the weather deteriorated they were denied even this option. As they shipped spray in force 10 seas the only option was to hove-to, turning away from their intended course and face into the weather, holding position as best they could until the storm abated. Two days later, having received something of a pounding, we finally received a call over VHF radio. The Shackleton was finally in range and ready to make her approach to Bird Island. Unfortunately the weather was still not on our side. Holding position tantalisingly close to shore, Shackleton was unable to launch her cargo tender into the heavy swell.  After waiting, without success, for an improvement in sea conditions, we were forced to watch as she steamed away from us towards South Georgia where she planned to deliver cargo before returning to us a few days later. In the meantime we were stranded…..