I should stop wishing for better weather, every time I do it gets worse. This morning I woke to the sound of rain being beaten against the window by the ever present wind (it may have been a stronger wind but I can’t tell any more). I hoped it might pass quickly but it soon became apparent that it was set in for a while. The desire to go sampling waned. Maybe today would be a good day to catch up on some admin, putting my notes in order etc etc?

I went down to the Fisheries department and for the first time met Paul Brickle. Paul is the guy that I organised this whole trip through. Unfortunately he’s been on a research cruise since before I arrived only returning yesterday so this is the first time we have actually met except over a skype call. During our discussions Paul mentioned a good sampling site with some different species I potentially didn’t have. The site was only round the corner and with low tide still an hour away it seemed a waste to miss it so off I went into the rain… The site was near one of the many rotting beached hulks that exist along the Stanley shoreline, the Lady Elizabeth (photo 1). As I dug away on the beach a coach-load of tourists stopped and lined up on the road to take pictures, no doubt rather annoyed at the sight of a person in blue and yellow waterproofs digging holes on the beach directly inbetween them and the photogenic rusty wreck. Shame. I carried on. At least despite being wet, it didn’t feel as cold and my hands retained feeling this time.

Back in the lab I slowly began to steam and dry out. My catch turned out to include two different species of lugworm (photo 2). The photo shows the two different species. For anyone who has seen them before, these probably look just like the lugworms you find on beaches in the UK but I can assure you they're not. There are several differences to differentiate these two species on but the different colours are not one of them!

The rest of the afternoon involved getting equipment ready for my first dive trip – very exciting! Of course, in true UK style, the weather is deteriorating in preparation, Saturday looks decidedly dodgy with 30-35mph winds from the wrong direction! Still, we should get some dives in before that and I’m really looking forward to it. Apparently the poor (!) 8m recent visibility has cleared up (have these guys dived in the UK?!). We should have 4 days diving around Cochon and Kidney Islands, both nature reserves, located a short distance directly north of Stanley.

No more blog then until I get back on Sunday. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you about some fabulous diving!

After a rather warm few weeks the weather is finally starting to turn cold.

Many schools are reporting colder temperatures and some have even seen frost.

The bulbs I planted last year have started to grow already! They are 4cms tall. I wonder if they will survive if the temperatures get much colder. Please let me know if any of your bulbs have started to grow.

See this blog page from Sherwood Primary School - they have a write-up on their planting day. http://sherwood.primaryblogger.co.uk

See also pictures of planting at Ysgol Clocaenog, outside Ruthin.

Many Thanks

Professor Plant

The rain passed but the sun sadly didn’t return. In fact, it’s been really cold the last couple of days. Last week I only needed 2 layers to keep me warm while sampling, one of those having short sleeves. Today I had a long sleeved top, jumper, fleece and waterproof jacket and I was ok. Unfortunately that couldn’t keep my hands warm and thick gloves are no use when you’re trying to tease small worms out of mud.

My first site was a shallow inlet with a stream running into it at the top. The tide had retreated and left a windy and gradually widening watercourse to follow. After 15minutes tramping along with the going getting gradually softer I began to realise that I still couldn’t see where the sea had disappeared to (photo 1). This did not bode well and I decided not to try and find the end as it was becoming more likely I might get stuck in the mud and also that when the tide did decide to come back in it would be very fast up such a shallow area. Instead I sampled 3 different spots and then made my way back to the car and set off for the next site.

As the two sites were facing completely different directions in terms of where the sea approached them from, this meant that the times of low tide for each were actually nearly 3 hours apart allowing to sample the same tide in both places.

The second place gave me an interesting offshore back to sample that was accessible at low tide. Again, this was quite different to places I had been before and was completely packed with little tubes (photo 2) indicating a LOT of worms should be there in the tubes.

Once again my hands were completely frozen and numb by the time I finished and I was glad to stop. The feeling in my toes had also started to disappear and I tried to think warm thoughts of the week before. What happened to the sun?

Still my excursion out had been a nice change. The roads are a little disconcerting to drive on as once you leave Stanley they are all unconsolidated gravel. The maximum speed limit is 40mph for good reason and every so often the landrover wavers a little as you drive before grip reestablishes itself and I try to relax my grip on the wheel too! I also got to see the ‘granite runs’, a strange area of naturally occurring broken granite blocks (photo 3) of which the Falkland Islands has one of the largest areas in the world.

Today’s wormy photo (photo 4) is of a paraonid (still no common name I’m afraid), one of my new worms today.

Fingers crossed it might start to warm up again soon!

This morning’s work was based back at the rock pool site I visited on Friday morning. It was a tad chilly first thing and the cold water rapidly sapped all feeling from my hands. I wanted to have another look at the encrusting algae (photo photo 1) that I had failed to do anything with on Friday and to that end I had taken along my trusty dive knife. This made pretty short work of chipping away and prising up chunks of the hard stuff and as hoped I found treasure beneath. Ok, not treasure but there were some worms and that would have to do. I happily splashed around the rock pool for a while variably slicing off bits of algae and digging in the gravel under stones until low tide had passed, I felt I had made a decent effort to collect everything available and my hands had stopped working entirely. I made my way back to the Fisheries department just in time to avoid the torrential rain that suddenly appeared.

Today’s highlighted worm is Boccardia (photo 2 - sorry no common name). This is what mostly lived in that encrusting algae, burrowing through the crevices. I was also pleased to get some more of a species of ragworm that was originally described from these islands. I’ve been able to identify it by the pattern of teeth that are found around the jaws (photo 3). It’s good to have examples of animals from the same place they were originally described as you can be sure then that you are looking at the same species that was used to write the original description. Important if you feel the need to change the description or the name (an annoying habit of taxonomists!).

I had also decided that tomorrow’s adventure would be to leave the Stanley area and try and sample some interesting looking spots a bit further away. Unfortunately it was pointed out to me that most of the Islands are split into privately owned lands that include the foreshore. I therefore spent a couple of hours this afternoon tracking down the land owners names, then their phone numbers and finally tried phoning to ask permission to collect. The permissions were freely given once I managed to get an answer although the people did sound a little bemused at the request. So that is my day tomorrow, the challenges being to a) find my way to where I want to go (there aren’t many roads and even fewer road signs) b) find my way back (possibly not as straight forward as it may sound).

I have refuelled the landrover at the only petrol station on the island at the princely sum of 72p per litre for diesel. Wish me luck.

As I write this I can hear hail being lashed against the window by the wind. It sounds more like a UK November night than the kind, if blowy weather I’ve had up to now. So for anyone irritated by my constant mentions of bright sunshine you can feel a bit happier, hopefully only briefly though.

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!