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Dispatch from The Subantarctic Islands
The giveaway is a copy of 'Antarctica: An Absent Presence' by Philip Samartzis (RRP $60) thanks to Thames & Hudson
Greetings from the coastal waters just off Macquarie Island. I can’t believe we’ve been at sea less than a week and have already seen as much as we have. Apparently my surprised delight is rather common: people book this huge trip to Antarctica from New Zealand, focusing on the ice, and don’t think much about the island hopping they will do on their way down to the South Pole. Well, I’ve basically had my head blown off with the vast awesomeness of these places. In just four days I have seen thousands of incredible new creatures.
I’ve also unfortunately had my head blown off by having to pay $50 USD for a single GB of Internet data. You don’t wanna know how many of those vouchers I’ve had to buy to get this dispatch out. Of all the videos I took I could only choose one to turn into a gif, and if you keep reading down to Enderby Island you’ll see why. The ship’s IT officer, Mikhail, tells me we will lose internet completely once we set off from Macquarie Island to head South into open waters and cross the threshold into the Antarctic. That’s happening at 9pm tonight, so I’m shooting this off now, and I don’t know for sure when you’ll hear from me next.
Something I’ve noticed on all these islands is how very wild they feel. I’ve done a fair few being-in-nature adventures before, but none have felt this untouched and remote and extreme. All three places have beaches and hills covered in bones and carcasses. Most of the penguins and mammals and birds we saw are in the juvenile stage of their breeding cycle. I.e. pups born and eggs hatched in Spring and now it’s Summer they’re losing their baby fluff and growing up. That means you’re seeing super cuteness and inquisitive behaviour right next to truly gnarly stuff. Because that’s nature! Nature is metal!
We are informed—with an appropriate level of strictness—not to go closer than five metres from any of the wildlife, but they are often so curious and not used to humans they approach you! When this happens you’re just supposed to stay absolutely still until they lose interest and move along. As you can see from the Enderby Island gif below… it doesn’t always work.
On the whole my fellow passengers are lovely. There is a clear and distinct age gap (three young-ish; the other 120-something significantly older) but it makes for excellent conversation. I’ve met a guy who works in science research getting pig organs to be accepted by the human body for those on long transplant waiting lists. I’ve met a woman who did wildlife rescue for years and is now a master cake decorator. I met a guy who is basically a modern-day cartographer. Lots of retirees have half a dozen diamond-grade anecdotes about their working life. Only one or two small awkward Boomer comments so far.
There are also about a dozen serious twitchers and another dozen serious wildlife photographers. It’s a ship full of nerds, and I feel deeply at home among them. If there is ever a quiet afternoon the organisers ramp up the ‘education program’ which is one of the reasons I booked this specific trip. I’ve now attended mini lectures about penguins and seals, and tomorrow we’re getting some lessons about Antarctic exploration history and probably whales. There are so many staff here with us to lead the expedition tours and answer all our questions, and most of them have decades of conservation experience too. It’s fantastic.
The minor hitch is, of course, seasickness. My GP prescribed me anti-nausea medication but it makes you drowsy so I’m trying to see how long I can last without taking it. She also told me about these little patches you can put behind your ear with Scopolamine in them that last three days. The only trouble? They don’t sell them in Australia because of a small risk that they catalyse psychosis. Cool cool. My anti-nausea stuff is apparently also sometimes used to treat anxiety and psychosis-like symptoms, so who the fuck knows? I’ve got the patch on and I’m no more unhinged than usual. If I start hearing people in my cabin I’ll just take the calming-drowsy one. Lol.
When I got back from Macquarie Island just now the ship’s crew had come into my room and screwed heavy metal covers over my portholes. It’s a sure sign we’re getting serious now. We’ve been warned that we’re heading into wide open water and it’s going to get rough. Wish me luck.
The Snares
Our first stop was a strip of rocky islands called The Snares, and humans aren’t allowed on-shore without special science permits, so we got Zodiac tours of the coastline and spotted hundreds and thousands of birds, and got our first up-close encounters with New Zealand Fur Seals.
Note: you smell the seals before you see them. It’s a mighty powerful pong.
Getting from the ship into the Zodiac is actually pretty intense. You have to go down a steel gangplank alongside the ship, grab onto two guys’ arms with a ‘Sailor’s Grip’ on each hand, and jump across a choppy sea to land in the bottom. All your gear has to be waterproof, because when you’re zoooooooming across the ocean the cold spray really hits. It’s exhilarating.
I’m seriously enjoying all the new vocab i’m gathering. There’s a sea-going lexicon and an Antarctic lexicon and a twitcher lexicon etcetera: convergence (two waters meeting to make super nutrient rich conditions); calve (a small berg splits off a large berg); creche (collective noun for a group of seal or seal lion pups); tussock/tussac (huge tall grass clumps); holdfast (the part of a giant bull kelp plant that attaches it to the rocks). I’m keeping a list.
Enderby Island
Our second stop was Enderby Island, which is the northernmost piece of a collection called the Auckland Islands. A group of us went on a 12km hike that covered about half of the circumference of the place, and holy shit, it was wild.
These birds are called Shags and are similar to Cormorants—great divers. They were so inquisitive they came right up to us!
The video above (which I’ve turned into a gif in order to upload) shows a New Zealand Fur Seal following us. We tried to get away but it kept chasing and charging us! One of our guides, Ian, kept having to stand in between it and everyone else, and Ian said dealing with these odd small agro male seals was just like dealing with juvenile grizzly bears in his home in Canada. Our other guide, Chris, who has been bitten by seals multiple times, says it’s more like dealing with a drunk at 3am—they’re looking for any excuse to raise the stakes. One charged me and if Ian wasn’t there it would have bit me for sure.
Below you can see a Yellow-Eyed Penguin in the scrub. They’re usually extremely shy and seeing one this close was super rare and special.
The Auckland Islands were formed by very very old volcanoes going off. If you look at a topographical map you can clearly see the two rings. Macquarie Island, on the other hand, is the only place in the world where you can see and walk on the earth’s crust, because the tectonic plates pushed it up and out of the water! How cool is that!? And it keeps rising a few millimetres every year!
Macquarie Island
Today we visited two different parts of Macquarie Island: the Isthmus and Buckle Bay; and Sandy Bay. We saw thousands and thousands and thousands of penguins. Some of them so got close I could have reached out and touched them. (Obviously I didn’t because that’s not allowed.)
Macquarie Island is also home to a huge number of Elephant Seals who are, frankly, freaks of nature. A woman in our group said ‘Only a mother Elephant Seal could love a baby Elephant Seal,’ and that they were ‘grotesque’ creatures. That lady sucks; I have quickly come to love and admire them. If I were in an anthropomorphising mood, I’d say they were being true to themselves and giving zero fucks. They’re blob-shaped, they stink, and are constantly making farting and burping noises. I took so many recordings of the noises they make. It’s astonishing how they didn’t care about us being there. Some, like this one below, were way bigger than cars. I was walking along the path through the ultra-high tussock grass, and one popped it’s head up and burped at me from less than a metre away.
An alpha Elephant Seal is called a ‘BeachMaster’, and he can have a ‘harem’ of up to 1,000 females. I laughed so hard when I looked at the alpha BeachMaster we saw today. Please go ahead and use the term BeachMaster in your everyday life; it is my new secret code for people who think they’re alphas but are actually gross.
I got to have a fascinating conversation with one of the rangers who is coming to the end of an entire year on Macquarie Island. She’s part of the Tasmania parks team, but the facility also gets major funding and support from the Federal Government through the Australian Antarctic Divison. Macquarie Island used to struggle with feral cats, rats, and mice, but slowly over many decades eradication programs have worked and the local species are returning to full health. This is what 40,000 Royal Penguins looks like. Macquarie Island is the only place in the world they will lay their eggs.
My favourite penguins so far are the Rock Hoppers. They’re so damn cute! Although lots of penguins do this really fucked thing where they lay one small egg each season and a few days later lay a way bigger one, and they only feed and care for the second one, leaving the first to die. Nature is metal!
Giveaways
Thames & Hudson Australia have very generously gifted a copy of Antarctica: An Absent Presence by Philip Samartzis (RRP $60) for you to win.
This beautiful volume of soundscape compositions, images and words from Philip Samartzis is an invitation to share in a remarkable journey of enquiry. Antarctica is a paradox of the sublime and prosaic: with its vast expanses of ice, snow and mountains—and traces of human habitation, from weathered huts to abandoned machinery.
Samartzis travelled south with the Australian Antarctic Division on several occasions and his recordings of the unique sounds of Antarctica have been used to create soundscape compositions which are meticulously realised on three CDs of the music included in this book."
Enter with your name and email address here. Please note that I will be drawing all of the February giveaway winners when I return in March.
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That is one expensive and thoroughly appreciated gif!
Brilliant. Never, ever imagined our daughter trecking to Antartica. So cool! So proud! What an amazing world. Much ❤️ safe travels my love.