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!

So, I’m happy. A new day with new worms (yes, I am easily pleased). Having said that, it is only the second day’s sampling and the challenge will be to be still finding new worms on day 28, I’ll let you know!

Bit of a late one though as late tides mean a later finish in the evening but conversely this does give me a lighter morning. I spent the morning driving around (I do like the landrover!) the local area checking out potential sampling sites, the idea being to spot places that have different habitats to each other that may harbour different species. On my way back into town I visited the local Museum. A small place with every square inch of wall space and several other cabinets covered in information on the history of the Falkland Islands from shipping, social history, whaling, natural history, geology and of course the Falklands War and island defence over the years. Very interesting.

For the afternoon, Freya made her return. This time we headed just east of Stanley to a spot known as The Canache. Strangely I hadn’t put Freya off the day before with a 2 hour stint on the beach and several more in the lab and she still seemed keen and smiling (Photo 1). The shore was very sandy, a complete contrast to yesterday’s rocks. This was of course deliberate as mentioned above in the bid to find new species. The shore was heavily dominated by a group of worms called bamboo worms (Maldanidae) whose tubes were evident with every spadeful (Photo 2). While kneeling down in the wet sand in my borrowed oilskin trousers (thanks Paul), I duly found the holes in the seams as the water seeped down my legs. Ah well.

We sampled a few times down the sandy beach and then moved across a small spit to a rocky area where we found a few of the same species as yesterday but also several new ones, including different species of ragworm and a large 1.5inch scaleworm (for those who don’t know this is very large), larger than any I have seen in the UK.

Back in the lab I had now managed to access the camera microscope, the downside of this being that it adds even more time to that needed to go through the animals. The results can be nice though although it will only take images of a small area so the animal needs to be small or you take a picture of a small piece. New to the day were some onuphids (Photo 3), flattened worms that build tubes on rocks and a goniadid (I think) that obligingly pushed its proboscis (the spiky-looking tube) out of its mouth (Photo 4). In these animals, the appearance of the papillae on this structure is often used to help identify the species so this was very useful. Pictures also act as later reminders of the colours of the animals as these can be a distinctive feature for identification but fade once they are preserved. I just need to find more tiny things now (sigh) so I can take pictures of whole animals as well.

What’s in store for tomorrow? (today actually as I didn’t manage to finish writing this last night), well you’ll have to wait and see as I haven’t made my mind up yet. Sun’s shining again though…

I'm a polychaete (marine bristleworms) taxonomist in the marine section of the Department of Biodiversity & Systematic Biology. I was awarded a grant by the Shackleton Fund to visit and conduct research in the Falkland Islands, so now I'm off to Stanley for the next month to collect and investigate the polychaete fauna of the Islands. I'll be collecting specimens by digging them up on the beachesand also by diving. It's nearly 100 years since scientists last looked at this group in the intertidal and shallow subtidal regions of the Islands and there is much potential for the discovery of new species.

Day 1

I can’t say I was looking forward to an 18 hour flight that much although it has to be said I had no idea what to expect flying on an RAF flight from Brize Norton. With dive kit in tow, I had a lot of baggage with me but this paled into insignificance next to the guys checking in from the BBC who faced a £4500 bill for excess baggage! The flight itself was fairly painless in the end taking off at 11pm and heading south through the night.

Nine hours and not much sleep later we landed on Ascension Island for a 2 hour refuelling stop. The 23°C fresh air was welcome although the views were very bleak (photo 1). Another 8 hours and 2 films later we finally arrived at Mount Pleasant in bright sunshine and more warmth. Not what I was expecting and I didn’t pack that much in the way of light clothing!

A long and dusty trip to Stanley showed a very windswept, rocky landscape dotted with sheep. After finding the flat I am staying in I also met Steve and Jude who I will be diving with later in the week. Jude then whisked me off for a quick tour of the local area including seeing my first penguin and a couple of beaches roped off due to mines!

This morning I made it to the Fisheries department where I will be based. Built on a large floating pontoon (photo 2) with a very disconcerting set of steps up to it (photo 3) everyone I met was very helpful and friendly and I’m looking forward to viewing my first group of worms in the lab there! Low tide is at 3pm this afternoon so I will be out with my fork and bucket beginning my investigations very shortly. I will also have the help of Freya a local volunteer and biology graduate who is keen get involved and see what we can find! 

Teresa Darbyshire