Ahoy! South Georgia

 Welcome back! It's been a while.

 I bring you this blog from the South Atlantic, soon to be the Southern Ocean, as I am being violently rolled around on the South Georgia Fisheries Patrol Vessel, MV Pharos.

MV Pharos

Photo credit: Louis Day

I was asked before I accepted the temporary position of a Marine Biologist at King Edward Point Research Station, South Georgia, if I get seasick- to which I confidently replied 'no'. However, this is a different story. The Pharos is a flat bottomed boat, one that rolls under any circumstance, flat or calm. The crew tell me she was made in Scotland with the specific purpose of working inshore, getting 'beached', loaded with cargo and then would float out to sea when the tide was high again. Something she was absolutely not made for was seagoing expeditions across the rolling South Atlantic and Southern Ocean northernmost boundary!

I do not like spending more time than necessary vertical so this is a new challenge to me. However, time has helped and my body has started to calibrate and allow me to eat meals and walk up vertical steps to go outside, whilst gripping the banister! The current boatman at KEP and my previous winter colleague Louis Day, told me he actually used his bag to block his body between the bag and the wall to stop him falling out of bed! It's that bad!

I should mention, I boarded the vessel only last night after landing in the Falklands via the MOD airbridge from Brize Norton in Oxfordshire to RAF Mount Pleasant airport, Falkland Islands. 

 

Leaving behind the white sandy beaches of the Falkland Islands

In stark contrast to my first voyage to Antarctica on the RRS James Clark Ross in 2020, which took two months door-to-door, I'll be leaving the UK and arriving to the sub-Antarctic in little under a week! I enjoyed the journey in 2020, gradually acclimatising to the temperatures across a slow progression of latitudes, sailing from the Northern hemisphere, across the equator, and into the Southern Ocean. However, unless we enter a global pandemic again, I'm not going to get paid a two month salary for a single commute to work. Instead, my body has been ripped up from 25 degrees in the UK to a bitter 2 degrees in the Falklands where the sun does not rise until 9 am!

The dramatic landscape of the Falkland islands, not a single tree in sight!

The RV Pharos passage from the Falkland Islands to South Georgia should take about four days, weather dependant. The Chilean chef has been cooking up a storm and is extremely accommodating of a vegetarian diet. I saw him take great pride this morning in telling the vegetarians what he has in store for us today. We even have salad! For South Ocean winter, that's pretty good going.

Blue-eyed shags rafting on the water

So Rothera to South Georgia? After leaving Rothera in March 2023, I've been working in Cambridge for the last year to analyse samples that I collected from the West Antarctic Peninsula, using SCUBA diving, and writing up a variety of research papers in preparation for publication. As my Cambridge contract was coming to an end, I saw a temporary position come up at South Georgia, for a Marine Biologist to work at King Edward Point Research Station (KEP), which was perfect timing. The long term wintering KEP Marine Biologists are responsible for monitoring, censusing and collecting samples from marine mammal populations from gentoo penguins to fur seals to albatross. However, the work requirements shift during the Southern hemisphere winter to fisheries based work and collecting samples of krill and larval fish in addition to conducting long-term plankton surveys around Cumberland Bay. Stay tuned as I begin to work on these projects and share photos and methodology of the Marine Biology from South Georgia.

Until then, it's the horizontal position for me....

Map of South Georgia produced by the mapping team, MAGIC, at the British Antarctic Survey

South Georgia is most famous for Sir Ernest Shackleton Trans-Antarctic expedition, Endurance in 1916. You can see his grave from KEP station windows!