27th January 2008 - Drake Passage North and Cape Horn

Time 07:37, 58 degrees 28.80' South, 64 degrees 18.14' West, overcast, dry Air Temperature 10 oC, Water Temperature 5.7 oC, Wind Northwest force 6, Sunrise 6.26am, sunset 10.41pm

Sunrise over Drake Passage this morning.
This is my last entry in my antarctic blog from the Marco Polo. It is a sad occasion for me as I will be leaving a really fantastic bunch of people on the Expedition Team and the crew of this fantastic ship. But it is also a happy one because I will be heading home tomorrow to my family. It has been an amazing odyssey for me, beyond my wildest dreams. I have made some great friends and had a brilliant time.


Found Kenny saying goodbye to his new friend in the Marco Polo shop window this evening!

At times the work was hard and the days long but it was never boring or unrewarding. I will be doing a summing up when I am home and settled back into life in Cobh but I must make a special mention to a few people here. I must firstly thank my wife Ann and sons Peter and Barry for all their support before and during my time on the Marco Polo. I also want to thank Chris and Annie Wilson for recommending me for the job and being soooo supportive in the lead up to me joining the ship. I also have a very special mention for the Expedition Team for putting up with me and the crew of the Marco Polo who are incredible.

The official Marco Polo Expedition Conehead photo at our last landing of the season at Half Moon Island yesterday.

I have two guest bloggers this evening. Firstly Sarah Clarke, who I have introduced already gives her final blog entry.

Sarah - Although Jim doesn’t agree I have the hardest job of all the expedition team because I have to talk about the fish of the southern ocean even though we never get to see them during our expeditions to the Antarctic peninsula. But you’ll have to take my word for it, they are here, honest!!

My experience on southern ocean fisheries comes from time I spent working with the British Antarctic Survey at their Applied Fisheries Research station on South Georgia, a sub-Antarctic island to the northeast of the Antarctic peninsula. South Georgia is an overseas UK territory with its government based in Stanley in the Falkland Islands. I spent two years researching the commercial fish species around South Georgia and when I wasn’t working I had a great time visiting the neighbouring seal colonies and penguin rookeries.

The Antarctic marine foodweb is more complex than the freshwater and terrestrial foodwebs. Although the majority of the food chains of the southern ocean are based on krill, a shrimp-like crustacean that is the preferred prey item of many of the higher predators, fish also play an important role in the marine food web. The fish feed on krill, copepods, other invertebrates, squid and other fish and they themselves are eaten by birds, penguins, seals and whales.

There are approximately 120 species of fish recorded below the Antarctic convergence (polar front), and most of them belong to the perch-like sub-order Notothenioidei, which is made up of 8 families. The Antarctic convergence causes a thermal barrier for the majority of the coastal and shallow water fish species recorded around the Antarctic continent, so that 85% of these species are unique to Antarctic waters. These fish are cold water specialists and have adapted to surviving in sub-freezing temperatures by producing anti-freeze molecules, known as glycol-proteins, which depress the freezing point and inhibit the formation of ice crystals in their blood.

The Icefish (Channichthyidae) family is an unusual group of fish. They lack the respiratory blood pigment, haemoglobin, and so they have creamy white blood and large creamy gills, hence, their name Icefish or ‘white-blooded’ fish. Icefish don’t have scales so they absorb the oxygen they need through their highly vascularised skin and across their large gill surfaces. Oxygen is carried in their blood plasma. Icefish have unusually large hearts which help to pump the blood and thus the oxygen around the body faster.

Another well known fish family from the southern ocean are the Notothens. The largest species of this family are the Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish, which can grow to over 2 metres in length. The Patagonian toothfish are found along the Patagonian shelf off the coast of Argentina as well as south of the Antarctic convergence. Toothfish are deep living fish and can be found below 2,000 metres. The older larger fish tend to live at greater depths.

The first Antarctic fish were discovered during the James Clark Ross Expedition (1839-1843). However, more extensive research into the physiology and ecology of southern ocean fish was not carried out until the 1950s. Commercial fishing began in the late 1960s. Since fishing activities began eighteen species of fish have been targeted commercially. The harvesting of these species has not always been carried out sustainably and many species have been heavily over-exploited leading to the collapse of some fish stock. Today fishing activities in the southern ocean are regulated by the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) which came into force in 1982, as part of the Antarctic Treaty System. CCAMLRs main aim is to conserve marine life of the Southern Ocean, but it does not exclude harvesting carried out in a rational manner. The area that is regulated by CCAMLR is approximately 32 million square kilometers and it has been divided into separately managed sub-areas.

Today the main fish species being harvested commercially are mackerel icefish, Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish and krill. CCAMLR sets annual quotas for each species for each of the sub-areas, which need to be adhered to, to ensure stocks are not being over-fished. However the CCAMLR area is so large its difficult to police it adequately and it is up to the oversea territories to patrol their waters and guarantee that over-exploitation of fish stocks is not occurring. Patagonian toothfish is more commonly known as Chilean Seabass. It is a highly prized fish and licenses to catch this species are in great demand. Krill were initially taken for aquaculture feed and fertilizer, however today krill is more frequently being processed for human consumption.

That’s all folks!!

Enjoy the blog.

Best fishes,

Sarah

Last but not least I want to thank Allan Morgan, Expedition Team Leader for taking me on and for all his advise and help during my first season in Antarctica. He is a talented leader and I wish him well in his retirement from Antarctica. Allan is the last of my guest bloggers and I think it appropriate that I should finish my last blog with him. This piece was written by him after one of our recent landings.

Allan Morgan, Marco Polo Expedition Team leader.

Allan - My day starts early in the morning with a shower and a quick breakfast. I don’t drink too much because everything I drink has to go somewhere and there are no bathrooms on the sites where we land.

Then it is on to the back part of the ship where two doors called shell doors open on either side of the ship’s hull. The zodiac team has already been lowered in their zodiac inflatable boats to the water. We walk out through the shell doors and down a short gangway to a platform suspended on cables just above the water. Into the first boat I go followed by the rest of the expedition team which includes my assistant expedition leader, Rich “Mad Dog” Kirchner from Montana in the USA; Captain Dick Taylor, our beachmaster from Washington state in the USA; Jim Wilson, the ornithologist from Cobh, Ireland; Sara Clarke, a marine biologist from Galway, Ireland; Tom Sharpe, our geologist from Cardiff, Whales; Lucia deLeiris, the expedition artist from Massachusetts in the USA; Marylou Blakeslee, our marine mammal expert from Alaska in the USA; Daniela Haase, our Antarctic management specialist from New Zealand; Ruriko Lindblad, our Japanese coordinator from Connecticut in the USA; David Harrowfield, our historian from New Zealand; and I am Allan Morgan, the expedition leader from Arizona in the USA. The zodiac team leader is Kevin Burke from Manitoba in Canada. We also bring two security men from the ship plus a collection of traffic cones, lines, signs, 3 shore emergency kits (with food and supplies to use if the wind comes up and we can’t return to the ship) and other gear.

We are all dressed in long underwear, fleece or wool sweaters, fleece jackets, water and wind proof blue parkas plus gloves, hats, waterproof pants and Wellington boots.

The zodiac nudges onto a rocky beach and we all get out along with the gear we’ve brought to set up an area that is safe for penguins and passengers alike. We get to work setting up traffic cones, signs and run orange lines along the ground to outline the area for passengers to visit the penguins without disturbing them. It takes us about 20 minutes to get set up and then receive the first group of 100 Passengers. I direct the expedition team to take their places and be prepared to answer passengers’ questions.

It takes about 6 ½ hours for us to complete a landing for 500 passengers who have 1 hour each to visit the penguins and other subjects of interest at the landing site. At the landing site today we have gentoo penguins. They have white markings on each side of their heads that are connected by a white stripe over the top of their heads. They look like they are wearing head phones and listening to MP3 players. White chicken like birds called Snowy sheathbills wander through the gentoo colony looking for disgusting things to eat. My job is to help passengers be safe and to keep them from molesting the penguins. The landing goes smoothly and everyone seems to enjoy the experience including the penguins. After the last passenger has left for the ship the expedition team removes all of the items we have set up and load them into a zodiac for our return to the ship.

The restaurant has been kept open for us back on the ship and we quickly go there for a late lunch. After lunch I stop in the ship’s Shore Excursions Office and check email to see if there any messages from the captain of our ship plus other department heads on the ship and the expedition leaders of other ships who may be going to the same place where we intend to go. An international organization coordinates the ship schedules but it is up to the expedition leaders from the various ships to iron out the details.

Then there is a lecture by one of the expedition team so I slip into the back of the Ambassador Lounge to see how many of the passengers are attending and how the lecture is going. I’m there for only a few minutes and then return to the Shore Excursions office to do some work on the computer.

We are traveling through a good area to see whales so I go out to watch for a while and talk with some of the passengers who are looking for whales with some of the expedition team.

I speak with passengers as I walk through the ship. I head to the bridge where I have a weather satellite receiver set up to show weather pictures form the satellite. The weather looks good for the next day.

Allan doing some administration work for the expedition.

Finally it is time for dinner with the expedition team before returning to the Shore Excursions Office to check email and do some projects on the computer.

And then I go to bed to prepare to start the process all over again tomorrow morning.

Thanks Allan!


Wildlife seen today.

Mammals
None!

Birds
Giant Petrel 10+
Grey-headed Petrel 3
Black-browed Albatross 60+
Blue Petrel 300+
Antarctic Petrel 10+
Unidentified Prion 300+
Sooty Shearwater 500+
Wilsons Storm Petrel 10+
Brown Skua 1

Note: A + sign after the counts indicates that we saw at least that number but more may have been present.

Cape Horn this evening.

Marco - It has been a great pleasure working with you. Thanks for the kind comments. If you ever end up docking at Cobh in Ireland be sure to look me up.

6th Class St. Mary's - Thanks for the support and will be in to the school to bring Kenny home.

Thanks Mary and Birgit!