A day of lab and office work in Stanley (Jan. 31, Frithjof)

Alexandra and I still had another exceedingly long night shift, leaving SAERI after 1 am – without even having finished our samples from North Arm. In fact, the seaweed diversity encountered there far exceeded our collections – once more. We had visited the site in Dec. 2010, already with a similar result, but the different season (almost 2 months later) made a big difference to the species composition which was now heavily dominated by red seaweeds (instead of the browns earlier in the season). Around 60 species, mostly of red algae from less than 2 hours of collecting! Correspondingly, Alexandra and I were in a Zombie-like state in the morning, and still around 25 specimens to prepare.

In the afternoon, we visited Paul Brewin in the new building of the Falkland Islands Government Fisheries Department with good lab facilities. This will become Alexandra’s research home after our departure back to Europe on Feb. 12. We made various arrangements with Paul about our diving plans etc.

I am writing this just before leaving SAERI once more. Tomorrow we will visit a couple of sites on the west coast of East Falkland.

Snorkelling at North Arm, 30/01/2012 (Alexandra)

Our sampling in East Falkland Island started rather successfully regarding the algal surveys and collections. Frithjof returned from the sea with more than 50 different species in less than 2 h! As it seems North Arm site is a hot spot for the Falklands’ seaweed biodiversity. It is remarkable that in such a an apparently degraded place the seaweeds still seem to have good habitat. North Arm is a small village in southern Lafonia the beach of which is used as a dump site; really an appalling sight: Domestic garbage from the settlement, car batteries, sheep carcasses and other unimaginable things pile up and are scattered around. You can find almost anything from old cars to plastic items and discarded cables on the beach.

 Snorkeling at North Arm

The tragicomic aspect of the operation was that Frithjof’s dry suit wasn’t so dry apparently… he came out completely soaked!!

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Later on a big night was waiting for us again, due to the huge number of samples which needed to be turned into herbarium specimens and keeping sub-samples in silicagel and CTAB buffer for genetic analysis. Our usual schedule for us is field work / sampling from 8am till 7pm and then working at the lab from 8pm till midnight or later. That’s the hard part of an expedition. Don’t think that we’re on holidays here!!

 

Preparing Herbarium specimens

 

  

Hard working

Exploring Lafonia (Jan. 30, Frithjof)

 

In flight from Sea Lion Island to Stanley

I am writing today’s blog in the back of a 4WD with Pieter at the steering wheel and Alexandra and Aldo trying to make up for some sleep missed last night. We are heading from Stanley to North Arm, the southernmost settlement in East Falkland, where we had made some very rewarding collections in mid-December 2010. 99% of the roads in the Falklands are unpaved dust and gravel tracks, which makes for some pretty tough driving considering the large distances across the East and West main islands. The southern part of East Falkland is also called Lafonia (after Samuel Fisher Lafone, a wealthy hide and cattle merchant on the Rio de la Plata in the 1840s).

Working up 3 days of collections from Sea Lion Island in our improvised lab in the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute (SAERI) in historic Stanley Cottage on Stanley’s waterfront (Ross Road) turned into a night shift from 9 pm to 1.30 am! This is not unusual for such expeditions – you spend the days travelling around, diving and working in the field, have a dinner, and then go to the lab. We try to exempt the driver from too much lab work given his tough and responsible job.

Indeed, collections were rewarding: around 40 different seaweed species from 3 days of collecting around the island.

We have just passed the Argentine cemetery, the villages of Darwin and Goose Green, with a brief stop at the grave of Nicholas Taylor, a Harrier pilot shot down over Goose Green in May 1982. Incidentally, he was a friend of Pieter’s neighbour from Monymusk, Aberdeenshire. For our generation and those older than us, the name of the tiny village of Goose Green will forever be associated with the bloody battle that was fought here in May 1982. 31 years on, the memory is still very much alive – there is still a barn marked “PoW” in the village, and the Argentine mine field is still there too – like several others around Stanley.

 Argentine cemetery

Return to Stanley (Jan. 29, Frithjof)

I am writing these lines in flight from Sea Lion Island back to Stanley – time in Paradise has flown by! We managed to do some very good collections by snorkelling at the Gulch yesterday (a site that is used for unloading cargo for the island) and off the NW tip today. This extended weekend on Sea Lion Island was the overture for our 2-month campaign exploring the Falklands Seaweed Flora. We all know that pretty hard work will follow now; staying in a nice lodge on an island full of penguins, seals and other amazing wildlife is not exactly representative of what such expeditions are like.

Frithjof Kuepper at the Gulch (Sea Lion Island) with some interesting algae specimens

Πανσέλινος και πιγκουίνοι

We had a lovely dinner and Pieter was presented with a great birthday cake made by José at the lodge! We then seized the opportunity of a nice sunset to go back to the Gentoo Penguin colony – very romantic moments in a noisy penguin colony! The sun disappeared and a full moon rose! We watched fat penguin babies chasing their thin parents for food – and skuas hovering overhead waiting for an opportunity to snatch their share. Thinking back, we all felt that this was by far the best day of the year 2013 so far. It had come and gone like a dream.