OPERATION BIRD COUNT

Forest and Bird, Volume 17, Issue 4, 1 November 1986, Page 28

OPERATION BIRD COUNT

CAPTAIN GERRY

CLARK,

carect and Bird Societv members are not confined in their areas of interest and study. Here, CHRIS SALE, a member

a a ee eee ee ee ee _- 7 of the Far writes of an expedition mounted and led by another Far North member

who has taken his expedition yacht Totorore around the stormy but bird-rich southern oceans.

, i ‘he Totorore expedition left New Zealand in February, 1983, with tne aim of studying the seabird life along the Antarctic convergence at sea and on all the islands and coasts along that region. It spent approximately two years exploring the bird life on the coast of Chile, also making a voyage down to the Antarctic continent and spending two winters around the coast of South Georgia. During the first voyage to South Georgia, a visit was also made to the Falkland Islands — Totorore losing its mast on this trip and after the second voyage there it continued to the South Sandwich Islands and to Bouvetoya before heading to Cape Town, for repairs. Bound for New Zealand, though, a mast was lost on the next leg, halfway between Cape Town and Marion Island, and the yacht had to cover 750 miles to Marion Island under jury rig. (The jury rig consisted of a spinnaker pole for a mast and a tarpaulin and bed sheets for sails!) At Marion Island some repairs were made, enabling Gerry Clark to continue solo to Crozet and Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. From there he sent a message that he was sailing on to New Zealand via Macquarie Island but storms rolled Totorore several times more, breaking its jury rig, and late in June the yacht limped into Freemantle, Western Australia. Repaired again, Totorore resumed its voyage, aiming now for New Zealand.

Deep concern for birds

Gerry Clark is a 59-year-old master mariner who through a lifelong study of birds, along with a feeling for the wide oceans, developed a deep concern for the future of the birds of the southern seas. This led him to build a small and sturdy boat in which others similarly dedicated might join him in studies aimed at safeguarding the birds and their lonely nesting places against the threat of commercialisation of the Antarctic continent. On the family organic orchard at Kerikeri he built the 11m expedition yacht Totorore (Maori name for Antarctic prion) largely at his own expense over a period of seven years and early in 1983 he sailed via Chatham Islands for Juan Fernandez Islands and southern Chile. In more than three years spent mainly visiting remote islands off Chile and in the southern oceans the expedition has collected a vast amount of detailed information about the distribution and breeding grounds of many sea birds. The expedition committee is grateful for the assistance and support it has received, especially from the Far North branch of the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, and many others.

Rich fields of study

The rocky wind and wave-swept islands of the Cape Horn area stretching eastward

past the Falkland Islands to South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands have over the past year been rich fields of study for Totorore and her crew. Those aboard with Gerry Clark have included such top ornithologists as Dr Alan Cowan, who has a Polar Medal for work on seabirds and Peter Harrison, British bird artist and photographer and author of the authoritative Seabirds, an Identification Manual. Both had left the expedition just before | joined it in February 1985 at Punta Arenas, in the Straits of Magellan and had left glowing accounts of their periods of voyaging and study aboard Totorore around the far south of Chile, Harrison commenting that Gerry had contributed a lot to the knowledge of the birds, the sea birds especially, of the ‘‘fantastic’’ Cape Horn area; and Cowan recorded a ‘‘most memorable experience in an extraordinary part of the world — harsh and desolate and quite frightening at times when the weather is fierce and one really feels the force of nahure." I arrived too late in the season to see much that was significant in the Cape Horn area, but Totorore was soon Off past the magnificent canals of Southern Chile and then down across Drake Passage to the Antarctic peninsula, with a New Zealander working in Chile, Joi Rosoman making up our crew of three. It was a very late time of the year to make such a trip because of the advancing pack ice. Most of the breeding bird life had left but because this was an unusual time to visit the area the information gathered could prove interesting. And it was definitely a stunning place with nature at its grandest.

Major undertaking

The next stage was to follow up the expedition made to South Georgia by Totorore the previous winter, on work for the British Antarctic Survey. On the results of this, Dr J. P. Croxall, head of the Birds and Mammals section of the British Antarctic Survey, based in Cambridge, England, wrote to the expedition headquarters at Kerikeri: "The project was to try to estimate the breeding populations of the two species, king penguins and wandering albatrosses, at all breeding sites known to us at South Georgia. This represents a major undertaking, the island being 182 km long, often of rugged topography and difficult of access, particularly under the weather conditions prevailing in the last winter. ‘‘Nevertheless in their two-month fieldwork period the Totorore team carried out counts of wandering albatross chicks at every known breeding site and of king pen-

guin chicks at all but three sites. Not only does this represent the most comprehensive survey of either of these species yet undertaken at South Georgia but, because all colonies were visited within a short time-span in a single season, it provides an excellent baseline against which to assess future changes’’. Our task, with myself and Chilean Julia von Meyer as Gerry's team, was primarily to count the three remaining colonies of king penguin chicks, uncounted the previous year because of their large size. We had a fairly gentle passage from Chile, and many black-browed, greyheaded and wandering albatrosses as well as many cape pigeons, various prions, giant petrels, Wilsons storm petrels and other birds soared about us. We sailed down the northern coast of South Georgia in fairly cold and wild conditions to check in to the authorities at Grytviken, and then headed back up the coast to a small island just to the north of South Georgia — Bird Island. There we were greeted by three scientists at a small British Antarctic Survey (BAS) station.

Vast seabird population

Bird Island has a vast population of seabirds breeding on it and many fur seals, most of which were absent as our stay was during the winter, but there were many wandering albatross chicks still on their nests. They are huge, covered in thick white down with big soft brown eyes, and when you walk past they clap their beaks at you with a sharp, clacking noise of deterrence. There were also many giant petrels. We immediately departed to start counting the large king penguin colonies. We counted the first colony one by one the chicks only in Ample Bay, in the Bay of Isles a quarter of the way down the island at the foot of glacier, a situation favoured by most of the colonies. To count them we moved them very gently off the area where they were and let them move back again through a narrow gap left between us. The adults are undescribably beautiful with bright yellow colouration about the head, and the chicks are covered in dark brown down. The adults have a trumpeting call,

while the chicks sort of whistle. Our group moved from there to Salisbury Plain, a vast flat area between two large gently sloping glaciers, a short distance along the coast from Ample Bay. This population was counted by estimating a group, then counting the group, then estimating on the basis of that the rest of the population.

Month-long count

However, the final group (the largest and numbering more than 34,000), we counted again one by one, having to separate them with fences to ensure that, over the month that it took, the same chicks were not counted twice. This was a tremendous task in logistics, getting fencing materials on the site, working in very adverse conditions at times to transfer the materials more than a mile across the snow. At times the snow thawed so we fell through into icy glacierfed streams, filling our boots with water. When we inevitably ran out of fencing materials we cut big blocks of ice and built long walls. The island of South Georgia is covered in snowy mountains and is divided up by many deeply crevassed glaciers. In the winter it is covered with snow right down to the water line. During the period Totorore was there the great majority of seals were absent, but there were still reasonable numbers of young elephant seals and fur seals, as well as quite a few leopard seals and some passive Weddell seals. After completing the counts of king penguin chicks, our party went to off-lying Anenkov Island on the wild and exposed west coast of South Georgia, to count the wandering albatross chicks there. We counted the populations of chicks, doing the same on Albatross Island in the Bay of Isles, completing the count of the two biggest populations of wandering albatrosses after Bird Island. During our stay we were helped enormously by the BAS scientists. The weather was at times fine and at times very cold and windy, allowing us to experience everything the climate had to throw at us.

Ice-beset waters

We departed from South Georgia and headed for the South Sandwich Islands through ice-beset waters, seeing large numbers of Antarctic petrels and southern fulmars. The weather treated us well and we managed to land on two of the islands, Candlemas Island and Vindication. All of the islands of this chain are volcanic, mostly active, and are all covered in snow and ice, some carrying thick icecaps. Many icebergs grounded near the islands had large numbers of chinstrap penguins on them which seem to travel large distances, using icebergs as a home. On the cliffs around the South Sandwich Islands, southern fulmars, cape pigeons and snow petrels nested there in abundance. On Candlemas we were pleased to find approximately 90 Adele penguins. We headed south down the chain of islands until the pack ice was reached, when we turned and headed to Bouvetoya. On the way to Bouvetoya there were three days of heavy icing and all hopes of landing on that island were dashed when it was found that the waves were very severe there. To collect data on the distribution of sea birds at sea, wherever possible every hour during daylight for a period of ten minutes we counted the number of birds and their species, as well as taking sea temperatures. So we still made good use of every day even when landings could not be made, although Gerry took advantage of every opportunity to get ashore.

Temperature rises

On the passage north to Cape Town the sea and air temperature rose on average by one degree C a day and we started seeing on average one new species of bird per day. We were now in a changed environment.. The work that the expedition has been doing is vital, although its role is very small. Totorore has been collecting data in areas seldom visited, rich in wildlife. The great southern continent could possibly be exploited in the not so distant future. Without the adequate data on which to base controls, the effect on wildlife in this region, out of the public eye, could be catastrophic. Not everybody, of course, has the good fortune of taking a trip such as this, but the ordinary citizen can influence the future of this hitherto unspoiled area in supporting groups like Greenpeace and the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, of which Forest and Bird is a member. #&