An email from Carla about how we would celebrate Christmas and New Year away from Campbell Island got a few Christmas memories going for the CIBE team. For Mark Crompton his Campbell Island Christmas memories are:
"Songs down at the wharf, Mountford pinot, mussels fritters, vodka steeped in sweet vernal, tangos...
With the one-year anniversary of our expedition to Campbell Island upon us, I have dragged out the video tapes and taken a trip down memory lane. One video that I know many of you were hoping to see was of our trip down to the island – charging through the raging seas of the roaring forties and furious fifties. Who can forget the excitement of the departure, with this being the first sojourn for the Royal New Zealand Navy’s Offshore Patrol Vessels (...
We awoke today to our first real storm. Perseverance Harbour had been transformed from the glassy millpond the previous day to one of wild whitecaps and battering waves. For the first time during this expedition the wharf was under siege from the harbour’s waves. As Mark C (our weatherman) explained it, there was a 35 knot nor-easterly wind driving the waves into the harbour and lowering the outside temperature to 5.5ºC – the inside temperature only marginally warmer at 6...
With the Maia and our first term CIBE team members now safely in Bluff it is time to take a moment to reminisce about some of the trips that we have had in the first half of this expedition.
For me, I will always hold a soft spot in my heart for the Northwest Bay Hut. This may just be because it was the first hut we stayed in, but I also found it to have a lot of soul and a great view (and we all know with property it is all about the location and the view) that I have found...
One of the main premises for our expedition is to plot the recovery of the island since the removal of sheep and the world's largest island rat eradication programme. Our work mainly concentrates on how this has benefited and changed the island’s plant and invertebrate communities, as these changes will have flow-on effects to the larger vertebrate species on the island. However, we cannot help but see for ourselves how the removal of the introduced animals has helped the smaller...
My ride home, the motor sailer “Maia”, arrived on Jan 10th and has been hanging around for the last few days to ferry various expedition teams to some difficult to access locations around the island. On Jan 12th the history, terrestrial ecology, and freshwater ecology teams were taken around to Northeast Harbour for a days work.
Northeast Harbour was the location of one of the largest whaling stations on the island and at its head is the mouth of Northeast Stream, a...
Having had a long-time interest in meteorology, I am the Expedition’s unofficial weather forecaster and receive weather-maps per the MetService Radiofax transmissions.
Interpreting these maps for the Expedition enables me to spread dismay, despondency and despair daily. I have a natural talent for this anyway and indeed doom and gloom is one of the few things I’m very good at.
If the weather is bad, as it often is here, I advise the team to make the most of it...
With the rest of the CIBE team back at base camp for New Year's, Alex James and I were making the most of the good weather to sample streams to the west of the island. Northwest Hut was our home for three nights and where we spent New Year's Eve.
We had a big day in the field that day, getting back to the hut around 9pm. We didn’t have much in the way of food or drink to herald in the new year, but we decided we could make our own fun out of our nightly chores. Maybe...
Walking back to base on the Beeman Boardwalk tonight at 10pm I had a wonderful surprise. From beside the walkway by my feet I saw a flash of brown and something fluffy landed on the path in front of me. Not sure what it was (wearing no contacts today so everything was looking pretty blurry to me) I grabbed the video camera. What a surprise when I zoomed in to see the wee Campbell Island Snipe. This tiny strange (but very cute) looking bird was unknown to science until its discovery in 1997...
Christmas on Campbell Island is a bit different to your normal NZ Christmas. The weather for one thing is a lot harsher down here, and there are also jobs to do before we can relax on Christmas morning. After a morning wakeup call we ripped into our Saturday morning base camp clean up (always on a Saturday and not even Christmas can prevent it) and then it was time to relax.
So for a Christmas mid-morning 'Champaign' (or in our case Mountford Riesling wine) celebration we...
The NZ book titled ‘a river rules my life’ comes to mind down here on Campbell Island. Not because we are sampling streams, but because of the similarity to how our lives are completely ruled by a single factor - the weather.
The evenings end with Mark Crompton downloading the weather fax at 10.15pm and writing a forecast that is posted on the hallway wall the following morning. The day then progresses either along the forecasted weather route or can deviate remarkably...
With favourable weather forecast we packed our sampling gear and headed over a ridge or two. We ended up in Camp Cove and went 'inland' up Camp Stream.
We had the usual sea lion encounters along the way. I've only been here 2 weeks but they're becoming boring - just kidding. They sniff around for a minute or two then get back to what they were doing - possible we're the boring ones?
Camp Stream is a delightful tannin-stained waterway that is relatively...
Campbell Island is a place full of surprises. Today she was in a beatific mood and the wildlife seemed to be in the same mindset.
Steve C and I rowed (well Steve did) around to Tucker Cove with the ContourHD in the water. The local sea lions were most interested in this new play-thing and one spent over an hour playing around the boat blowing bubbles, trying to bite the oars, bunting the base of the boat, and splashing us with his flippers.
I have a lasting memory of the...
On the day of their departure, Sarah Bedford (Cue TV) interviewed Shelley McMurtrie (Expedition Coordinator) about the upcoming expedition to Campbell Island. Sarah wanted to know about the research, but more importantly, what the team was going to crave while on this remote island for 9 weeks.
[Shelley McMurtrie]
Alex J, Mark C, and I arrived early Friday arvo and there was no time to waste; we were thrown right into the thick of the quarantine process. I must say, there's nothing like spending time in a warehouse with the bright sun overhead to help acclimatise for Campbell Island - was more suited to preparing for humid tropical rainforests! Can you believe it, Invercargill was in the mid-to-high twenties.
By the time Sunday arvo rolled around we were all done, and only a couple of...
9 weeks on a remote island with no power or supermarket means it's a good idea to trial the food first. Having worked through our nutritional requirements, Suzanne Henderson (SJ Consulting) developed our menu and shopping list. She also thought it a good idea to come over and demonstrate how to cook a couple of the evening meals. This time it was the fish pie - you might be able to tell we quite liked it.
[Shelley McMurtrie]
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