: Falklands Island Research

23.01.13
No sampling today and very glad I was too as a torrential hailstorm (photo 1) battered the office windows! A third parcel is now with the post office and will hopefully be winging its way up the Atlantic by the end of the week. The rest of today has been spent preparing for my trip to West Falkland tomorrow. I will be over there for 10 days touring my way around the island to try and get as good coverage of the shoreline as I can. As my choice of shores is largely dictated by the existence of roads by which to reach them and places I can stay my choice of sites was fairly restricted but I think I have a fairly good itinerary.

The ferry goes from New Haven to Port Howard in the evening which gives me time to catch the tide in New Haven just after lunch (why miss an opportunity?!). I’ll then be travelling south down the east coast to Fox Bay, further south and west to Port Stephens before turning north to South Harbour. From there I keep heading north this time up the west coast, stopping in at Chartres and Roy Cove before reaching Dunbar in the northwest. From Dunbar I will move along the north coast to Hill Cove, West Lagoons and Shallow Bay before heading back to Port Howard and digging a few holes there for good measure. Then its back to Stanley, get the last parcels on their way home before packing myself off too. Photo 2 shows the locations of the various sites.

It will certainly be interesting to visit the shores on the west and see if there is any obvious difference in the fauna there, particularly as I get up to the northwestern areas. That part of the islands is affected by more northerly temperate currents rather than the colder southerly currents dominating the southeast so potentially there may be many different species there.

Internet access is unlikely for most of the tour although I am hoping to be able to send short updates for the blog whenever possible by text to report any notable events!

Teresa

21.01.13
Yesterday (Monday) was probably the warmest day so far. Not necessarily the day you would pick for a dusty 3 hour drive across the island but that’s how it was. I was very thankful that the car had working air con as you can’t open the windows while driving unless you want the interior to be caked in half an inch of dust when you arrive. The timings of the tides meant that I would be able to catch both an evening tide and then a morning tide too, getting 2 sites done in the area. Unfortunately the tides at the moment are not the biggest so there is less beach exposed and available for sampling. Still at least I would get something - or so I hoped - North Arm turned out to be a very poor site for polychaetes indeed.

Monday night I picked a small creek just before the settlement (Photo 1). Rocky around the edges, the sheltered aspect meant that much of it was made up of very soft muddy sediment, the kind your boot sinks into and then stays. However, I found I could move around so long as I didn’t stay still too long but despite several attempts I was finding very little in the soft mud. Eventually I started finding some lugworms but by the end of nearly 2 hours I had found little else even though I had tried several places around the creek. It certainly made for a less arduous evening’s work than usual anyway.

The next morning, I tried the shoreline at the other end of the settlement. This proved to be very rocky with extensive mussel beds (Photo 2). The areas outside of the mussel beds had very coarse loose sand that again seemed to harbour very little in the way of obvious animals. However, I collected what I could find and then washed and sieved some of the sediment through a 0.5 mm mesh sieve. This is our standard way of getting a more complete view of the life in the sediment as the smaller worms will ‘float off’ in the swirled sediment and then be held on the fine mesh of the sieve as the water is poured through. The residue on the mesh is then washed into a pot and kept to be later sorted through under a microscope when any tiny animals can then be picked out. I did this for the general sandy sediment and also for some samples of the mussel beds which I washed off in a bucket and then poured through the sieve also. Hopefully there will be many more animals in there that I hadn’t been able to see without a microscope.

The long drive back then beckoned followed by more washing of previous samples and transferring them from formaldehyde to ethanol. Tomorrow I will be able to pack more pots and get at least one if not two more parcels of specimens on the way back to the UK. Photo 3 shows where North Arm is in the Falkland Islands.

Teresa

20.01.13
The weather today has been absolutely glorious. I realize that most people reading this will probably hate me for saying that, due to the current weather in the UK but it’s true. Managed to get out for a local dive this morning, a little further up the coast near York Point, east of Cape Pembroke. The dive site was a small rock rising a couple of metres above the surface (photo 1). It was only very shallow but there was an amazing amount of life on the colourful reef, including, most importantly of course, worm life. The main downside of sampling underwater out here is the prevalence not just of kelp, but of giant kelp (photo 2). This stuff gets everywhere, in your face, round your legs and just generally in the way!

One of the reasons we had gone there was so that I could see and sample some Phragmatopoma reef (as mentioned in the previous blog) and although not large we did find some (photo 3). There were also many fan worms (photo 4), another large worm known as the parchment worm (Chaetopterus sp.) for its thick papery tube and a colony of other smaller, thinner-tubed worms (photo 5) in the same family but a different genus to Chaetopterus.

Sadly, that one dive was the only one we did but I have enough work to keep me going into the evening now looking through them.

Tomorrow, I am heading south to North Arm, the southern-most settlement and furthest south the road goes on East Falkland. The tide times are such that I will be able to make both the evening and the next morning tides in order to get plenty done before heading back to Stanley on Tuesday.

Photo 6 is a map of the Falkland Islands showing where I've been.

Teresa

16.01.13: There was no sampling planned today but instead I took an opportunity to look after the samples I took on the first 2 days out. My samples are always ‘fixed’ in formaldehyde to preserve the animals properly for later investigation but formaldehyde is acidic and it is not good to keep specimens in the fluid for too long. After at least 2 days being ‘fixed’, they are washed with freshwater to remove the formaldehyde as well as the salt from the seawater and then placed into 70% ethanol for better long term preservation. The last time I was here I left this job until the last few days of stay and then it took me a very long time to get through all of the samples. This time, particularly as I do not have much time between the end of sampling and my flight home, I am trying to be more efficient and do this job roughly every week which means it will be fairly quick each time and I can then also get the samples packaged up and sent off at intervals. This in turn avoids trundling multiple boxes down the post office and seeing the horror on the person’s face as they peer over the counter at the pile on the floor to be processed for recorded delivery!

The next job on the list was to start writing the public talk I will be giving next week at Government House here in Stanley. The talk is on the progress of the project looking at the polychaete life in the Falkland Islands and will give a summary of the results so far from the last trip, including details of three new species discovered, as well as the purpose of this trip and where I will be visiting while here. Hopefully anyone who comes along will agree that the work is well worth doing and producing important results.

Unfortunately, the diving expedition I was due to go on for the next few days has had to be cancelled due to others being unavailable although I am promised some diving at least on Sunday if not Saturday as well. Instead I have planned a last minute trip to one of the outer islands, Saunders Island. Like many others, this island is a nature reserve although the owners have given me permission to do some extra sampling there. This will be part leisure as well as getting extra sampling in (never travel without your trusty trowel, sieve and pots) and I am looking forward to seeing some penguins again. This will also be the farthest north I get to on this trip and as such an important addition to the route. Wifi does not exist that far out so no updates until the weekend (or after).

19.01.13: I’ve just come back from 2 days out on Saunders Island, one of the larger outer islands in the north west of the area. The island is host to a mountain of wildlife and I was hoping to see lots of this while at the same time being able to continue my sampling on such a distant point. Although I was staying in the settlement on the east coast of the island, the owners gave me a lift to one of the more northern parts of the island known as The Neck (photo 1). This is a narrow stretch of land with sandy bays to the north and south so the idea was to try and sample both sides and be able to compare them. The low tide was not until the evening at 7.30pm and the owners generously agreed to come back and fetch me at 8pm so I would be able to do my sampling (it’s a 10 mile hike back to the settlement from there). The late tide also meant that I had time to do some walking of my own and visit the different penguin colonies in the area: Magellanic, Gentoo (photo 2), King and Rockhopper, all charming as ever particularly the curious gentoos who will come right up to you if you sit down and wait patiently. I was also surprised, and not a little dismayed, to find a large population of caracaras (photo 3) in the area, not my favourite bird as many will know. Any time you stop moving or put anything down, however briefly, a caracara will almost immediately turn up and start investigating, poking things with a very sharp talon to see if its worth flying off with.

Once the tide was about half way out on the north beach I set about poking around with my trowel. Nothing. Hmm. More holes, still nothing. This wasn’t good, the clean white/grey sand beaches the penguins are so fond of is obviously very bad for worms. I found nothing at all in the high shore region so tramped disconsolately down the beach before deciding to go and try the south beach. Nothing. Another hole, still nothing, the caracaras were shadowing me, either hoping or expecting me to give up and drop dead at any second. As I plodded along this beach my eye was suddenly caught by a discrepancy on the surface. Looking closer the little grey spots looked like small worm casts, so out came the trowel. Success! I was so happy, I wasn’t going to leave with nothing! There weren’t many but I did manage to collect a small variety of worms, always keeping a sharp eye on anything I put down and occasionally having to shoo-off the insistent thieving birdlife. As I moved further down the shore with the tide, the casts became slightly more common and I felt that at least I would have a representative collection for the area. Beaches are not always teeming with worms and this was obviously one of those. At the end I went back over to the north beach to see if I had missed those small signs of worm life. I still couldn’t see anything but had a dig down at low water and did find a sparse population of worms to collect. The worms in this habitat apparently only inhabit the mid-low shore and not high shore at all.

The next day, blessed with blue skies and warm sunshine, I planned a hike up the east coast towards a sandy bay one of the owners had told me about where he said he had seen evidence of worms before. I knew it wasn’t close and 2.5 hours later I made it. As low water had been early morning I knew I wouldn’t be able to sample properly but at least would be able to do a bit from midshore upwards. I stared in dismay at the billions of tiny worm holes (photo 4) on the surface of the soft sand. The only way to do this beach justice would be several hours and a large spade, neither of which I had. With the tide rapidly encroaching I did what I could before retreating. I realized there was not a single penguin to be seen on this beach. It would seem that penguins and worms do not mix, a good beach for one is a bad beach for the other. I continued my hike a short distance further so I could see one of the other main highlights of the island, the black-browed albatross colony (photo 5) that breed here, then I headed back.

I used the late tide that night to investigate the local harbour 5 minutes from the settlement, happily poking around the mud and rocky foreshore. Amazingly, there were many polychaetes (family Cirratulidae, photo 6) sitting right out on the surface of the mud all over the place. Under the flat rocks of the foreshore I found large white sipunculans (photo 7), relatives of the polychaete group and a species of polychaete that I don’t think I have had anywhere else, a definite highlight for the trip.

Saturday (today) saw me return to Stanley with my haul and I then spent the rest of the morning doing more formaldehyde washing-out from last weeks specimens and packing my first box ready to post back on Monday!

Photo 8 is a map of the Falkland Islands indicating where I was.

Teresa Darbyshire