: Ymchwilio yn Ynysoedd Falkland

The rain passed but the sun sadly didn’t return. In fact, it’s been really cold the last couple of days. Last week I only needed 2 layers to keep me warm while sampling, one of those having short sleeves. Today I had a long sleeved top, jumper, fleece and waterproof jacket and I was ok. Unfortunately that couldn’t keep my hands warm and thick gloves are no use when you’re trying to tease small worms out of mud.

My first site was a shallow inlet with a stream running into it at the top. The tide had retreated and left a windy and gradually widening watercourse to follow. After 15minutes tramping along with the going getting gradually softer I began to realise that I still couldn’t see where the sea had disappeared to (photo 1). This did not bode well and I decided not to try and find the end as it was becoming more likely I might get stuck in the mud and also that when the tide did decide to come back in it would be very fast up such a shallow area. Instead I sampled 3 different spots and then made my way back to the car and set off for the next site.

As the two sites were facing completely different directions in terms of where the sea approached them from, this meant that the times of low tide for each were actually nearly 3 hours apart allowing to sample the same tide in both places.

The second place gave me an interesting offshore back to sample that was accessible at low tide. Again, this was quite different to places I had been before and was completely packed with little tubes (photo 2) indicating a LOT of worms should be there in the tubes.

Once again my hands were completely frozen and numb by the time I finished and I was glad to stop. The feeling in my toes had also started to disappear and I tried to think warm thoughts of the week before. What happened to the sun?

Still my excursion out had been a nice change. The roads are a little disconcerting to drive on as once you leave Stanley they are all unconsolidated gravel. The maximum speed limit is 40mph for good reason and every so often the landrover wavers a little as you drive before grip reestablishes itself and I try to relax my grip on the wheel too! I also got to see the ‘granite runs’, a strange area of naturally occurring broken granite blocks (photo 3) of which the Falkland Islands has one of the largest areas in the world.

Today’s wormy photo (photo 4) is of a paraonid (still no common name I’m afraid), one of my new worms today.

Fingers crossed it might start to warm up again soon!

This morning’s work was based back at the rock pool site I visited on Friday morning. It was a tad chilly first thing and the cold water rapidly sapped all feeling from my hands. I wanted to have another look at the encrusting algae (photo photo 1) that I had failed to do anything with on Friday and to that end I had taken along my trusty dive knife. This made pretty short work of chipping away and prising up chunks of the hard stuff and as hoped I found treasure beneath. Ok, not treasure but there were some worms and that would have to do. I happily splashed around the rock pool for a while variably slicing off bits of algae and digging in the gravel under stones until low tide had passed, I felt I had made a decent effort to collect everything available and my hands had stopped working entirely. I made my way back to the Fisheries department just in time to avoid the torrential rain that suddenly appeared.

Today’s highlighted worm is Boccardia (photo 2 - sorry no common name). This is what mostly lived in that encrusting algae, burrowing through the crevices. I was also pleased to get some more of a species of ragworm that was originally described from these islands. I’ve been able to identify it by the pattern of teeth that are found around the jaws (photo 3). It’s good to have examples of animals from the same place they were originally described as you can be sure then that you are looking at the same species that was used to write the original description. Important if you feel the need to change the description or the name (an annoying habit of taxonomists!).

I had also decided that tomorrow’s adventure would be to leave the Stanley area and try and sample some interesting looking spots a bit further away. Unfortunately it was pointed out to me that most of the Islands are split into privately owned lands that include the foreshore. I therefore spent a couple of hours this afternoon tracking down the land owners names, then their phone numbers and finally tried phoning to ask permission to collect. The permissions were freely given once I managed to get an answer although the people did sound a little bemused at the request. So that is my day tomorrow, the challenges being to a) find my way to where I want to go (there aren’t many roads and even fewer road signs) b) find my way back (possibly not as straight forward as it may sound).

I have refuelled the landrover at the only petrol station on the island at the princely sum of 72p per litre for diesel. Wish me luck.

As I write this I can hear hail being lashed against the window by the wind. It sounds more like a UK November night than the kind, if blowy weather I’ve had up to now. So for anyone irritated by my constant mentions of bright sunshine you can feel a bit happier, hopefully only briefly though.

Luckily by the time we left Friday night the rain had moved off although the wind had been left behind. I had been told it would be a 3 hour drive to Volunteer Point so when we arrived at a gate into a field at a group of houses I said “Wow that was quick, are we here?” “Oh no, this is just where the road ends!” Cue 2 more hours of bouncing over peaty grassland following any one of numerous tracks picked mainly by virtue of which looked less boggy. There were four 4x4s in the convoy (photo 1) and there was nothing to worry about because we had a new towrope (apparently the last had snapped recently, no doubt dragging someone out of a bog). Getting ‘bogged’ was just a general hazard that didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. I hoped I wouldn’t have to see the new towrope in action.

A bit less than 2 hours later we bounced up to the warden’s house at Volunteer Point (actually only 10 miles from where the road had ended!) before moving on to put the tents up.

The wind actually died down later in the evening but was howling again by morning. The sun had arrived though with a bright blue sky and I went off for a bit of penguin spotting before breakfast. I’ll skim through all of the details but basically there are 3 species of penguin at Volunteer Point: King (photo 2), Magellanic and Gentoo. We spent Saturday over at Cow Bay just across from VP. A large expanse of beach with several Gentoo colonies bizarrely located up a very large, steep hill away from the sea. The reasoning for building nests in a place that must be an enormous trek for such non-flying birds with legs of only a few inches was unfathomable.

And the body-boarding, yes three people did go in, I did not. They all said how much fun it was but it did also take an hour for the feeling to come back to their toes afterward.

Volunteer Point is a spit of land with the sea on both sides. Just down from the campsite was a sheltered lagoon with a gravelly shore leading into sand. I did some sieving in here on Sunday morning and was pleased to find it contained many worms. My only worry was that I will find something incredibly exciting in it and only had the chance to sample it once and it’s a difficult journey for anyone to go back to.

An afternoon stroll on the main exposed beach later saw me picking up some washed up bladders off giant kelp. As I sporadically bent down, picked one up and shoved it in a pocket someone eventually got round to asking me why. I pointed out the encrusting spiral tubes of worms attached to the bladders (photo 3) and received some sympathetic nods in reply. This was all then forgotten as we witnessed nature in action in the shape of a sealion appearing suddenly out of the surf intent on grabbing a penguin off the beach (photo 4). Not a happy ending for the penguin I’m afraid. This was probably a major highlight of the weekend and I have to admit I did spend the next hour hoping another penguin might be sacrificed for my camera although I was to be disappointed.

So we bounce, bounce bounced back from Volunteers Point stopping twice along the way to change flat tyres on different cars as the tracks took their toll. Still it was worth the trek.

Back to reality with a 6am start for the early tide!

Today I became connected to the rest of the Falkland Islands or at least became easier to find and for cheaper. Having had people trying to find me and failing yesterday, also sadly leading to a missed dive opportunity, I managed to buy a local SIM card for my phone and also unlock my phone in order to use it! Phone numbers here are short whether they are home or mobile, consisting of only 5 numbers. Well, I suppose the population just isn’t big enough to need anything longer! As well as meaning that those trying to help me out here actually can, this also now has the added bonus of personal safety in case I slip on some giant kelp while chasing a worm and injure myself (hopefully not) at least I can get someone to come and rescue me.

Tides are getting later and today’s was not until 1650. So around 3pm Freya and I headed down to Moody Brook (photo 1), a fantastically named area west of Stanley where a river joins the sea making a slightly estuarine region. I hoped to find a different brackish water fauna here but it didn’t seem to quite work out. The animals I was finding were not ones that I would associate with lower salinity water and in fact, the lower we got on the shore the more they looked like several we had found at previous sites. Some were different, more a product of the softer muddy sand than the salinity though. Our last sampling spot in fact, was so soft that it threatened to steal my wellies several times (photo 2). Luckily there were several rocks around as well to help lever myself back out with thanks to the spade.

We were getting pretty cold towards the end and trying to draw a map of the sampling sites with numb fingers certainly didn’t create artwork. It was windy before but it has definitely picked up and with a colder edge to it than before. Apparently it’ll be gale force by tomorrow and its certainly whistling round outside right now!

Investigations back in the lab showed that indeed several of the species were the same as those I had found before although in some cases this was very welcome as it provided additional numbers of animals that I had only found single numbers of before. Having multiple specimens of species is very important if you later need to describe a new species or just improve current descriptions. With only a single animal to work with you can never be quite sure if it truly represents the rest of the species or not as mutations can frequently occur.

I have noticed as well over the last few days that the worms here are doing what everything else at this time of year (spring in this case) is doing – reproducing! Many of the worms have eggs or larvae attached and I took this image (photo 3) of an animal called a syllid with all its larvae attached for safe-keeping giving it a very strange appearance.

Tides tomorrow are very awkward – do I go for the 5am or the 6pm? Early start or late finish… ?

So did you guess which one I went for. Yes it was the early one which involved getting up at 4am. Sounds bonkers I know but there was some method in the madness not least of which was that it was still early enough to go back to bed once I finished for a couple more hours sleep!

To the east of Stanley but on the outward facing coast is Surf Bay. As its name suggests it is an exposed beach and is also made up of fantastically white sand looking very tropical in the bright sunshine the first time I saw it (photo 1). Sadly it didn’t quite look like that at 4am with a bit of mist and grey sky, but at least the wind had dropped for now which it always seems to first thing in the morning here.

The sand is very fine and to be honest did not look like the kind of habitat you normally find much in the way of worms in. However I wanted to try sieving a bit of it to see if there were any of the tiny species that sometimes inhabit such areas. For this reason I only needed a short time around low tide to try this as I could always come back if necessary. After this I moved across the headland to the even more exposed rocky side with low rock pools and mostly bare rock. The rocks here are covered in a pink encrusting alga similar to that you may have seen in the UK. This also sometimes harbours its own fauna under the crust so I took a small rock covered in that away too to see what it might hold.

After catching up on some sleep I took my small collection to the lab. As suspected the pale sand held nothing in store for me except some very active amphipods and isopods (small crustacea). Glad I hadn’t wasted good collecting time there! The rock however turned out more interesting. The pink crust was so tightly fixed to the rock that there were no animals under the small pieces I managed to chip off. However the small pieces of seaweed that had been attached yielded several small worms new to my list from their holdfasts. These were interesting enough that I will go back to this site on Monday to get some more rocks to play with (at a more sociable time as well).

My other reason for choosing the early tide was the fact that I am being dragged off this evening to visit the King Penguin colony over at Volunteer Point. One small drawback to this is the fact I have to camp. Not that I am averse to such activity but I normally choose warmer weather, the offer of a wetsuit to join in some body boarding may also require some inventive excuses. Do surfers need shore cover? I think they do and I may sacrifice my enjoyment to provide it. The weather has now also deteriorated, probably due to the impending camping event, and it's raining combined with a howling gale force wind (photo 2). Just like camping in the UK really. I am of course also taking some sampling gear with me just so no opportunity will be missed!