.jpg "Head of Monument Harbour. View to the Six Foot Lake outlet and Mt Honey in 2011. Image by Norm Judd 2011")
-SMcM.jpg "The Maia's first mate lowering the IRB which was used to ferry Norm back and forth across the bay with his magnetometer. Photo © Shelley McMurtrie, 2011")
-SMcM.jpg "Nigel and Steve descending Puiseux Peak to Six Foot Lake in January 2011. The location of timber beam is at the bright green grass at the lake outlet (left of image). Photo © Shelley McMurtrie.")
-SMcM.jpg "Nigel Prickett (back) and Steve Bagley lifting the sod on the timber beam in January 2011. Photo © Shelley McMurtrie.")
-SMcM.jpg "Nigel Prickett (back) and Steve Bagley measuring the timber beam in January 2011. Photo © Shelley McMurtrie.")
-SMcM.jpg "The timber beam after lifting the sod in January 2011. Photo © Shelley McMurtrie, 2011")
-SMcM.jpg "Nigel Prickett (from left), Steve Bagley and Shelley McMurtrie savouring the moment after completion of the sod lifting around the timber beam in January 2011. Photo © Shelley McMurtrie.")
-2011.jpg "The iron pin collected from the beam in Monument Harbour in January 2011. Photo by Norm Judd 2011.")
In December 2010, and January and February 2011, the Campbell Island Bicentennial Expedition, (CIBE) was on Campbell Island. The cultural heritage team; archaeologists Steve Bagley and Nigel...
-SMcM.jpg "Carla interviewing a passenger from the Orion at the wharf")
-SMcM.jpg "Carla writing out notes from her interview")
-SMcM.jpg "A smile after the final interview")
Now that the team are back on the mainland it is time to consolidate our island research into publications. With respect to two of my projects data collection from Campbell constitutes one component of a wider research agenda requiring further empirical research. The first of these two projects focuses on the history and anthropology of scientific endeavour on Campbell and the influence of changing bureaucracies of science funding and management; the second will utilise a network analysis...
-SMcM.jpg "Alex and Carla clearing the nets one last time.")
-SMcM.jpg "The cutting down of the nets begins.")
-SMcM.jpg "The nets are lovingly folded for storage (in the rubbish bin).")
-SMcM.jpg "A special moment deserving of a special wine – Mountford’s 2008 Chardonnay.")
-SMcM.jpg "Cheers to the nets and the end of 60 days of sampling.")
60 days of snow, rain, hail and gale has pelted the six 3 metre long insect nets that I installed with Steve C., Carla and Jo’s help just south of the base after our arrival. Against the demons of weather, the nets have stood strong, no doubt due to the clever hand of the net constructor, my Ma, and her sewing machine.
For 2 months I have daily cleared the amassed invertebrate treasure, often with Carla’s assistance, and with Carla and Mark covering for me when I have...
Many of the historic sites that were easily seen in 1981 are now obscured by scrub and other vegetation. I have included two images here that show the rate of vegetative growth on Campbell Island over the last 30 years.
The first image is one I took on my 1981 visit to the island. It shows posts and a central pole of what may have been a small tent camp from the early farming era beginning 1895 – a site now known as the ‘Bivvy’. In the middle distance are two...
Yesterday the History Team of Steve, Nigel and Norm walked to a site believed to have once held a try pot or try pots for rendering seal or whale blubber. It’s not too far from Beeman Camp where we are staying and we are thankful for this as we still have lots of walking to do to finish our research projects by 4 February. (In addition, the average age for our team is 64.3 making ours the oldest team by far. We three agree our knees have seen better days and have talked about getting...
I am the last person to ever ascend the loneliest tree in the world. I did this earlier today, and I am on a bit of a high as a result. I have joined a legion of eminent New Zealand naturalists, among them Sorensen (1945), Godley (1969) and Meurk (1975+) who have measured the height of the Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis) at Camp Cove. Lord Ranfurly planted the tree in 1907 and from the 1940’s onward it has been repeatedly measured, in part for posterity, in part because it is an...
On 21 January, the History Team (Steve, Nigel and Norm) walked over to the North West Bay hut. This was our base for visiting nearby sites. In cold and blustery north easterlies the following day, we carefully traversed Sandy Bay avoiding ‘beach master’ sea lions (otherwise known in Met. Station terms as ‘monsters’) and then climbed 35 metres onto Complex Point. Pushing through tussock, ‘draco’ and fern, we arrived at the knoll at the end of the point....
I left you in my last blog crawling through the draco in search of Fred Blogg’s Cave above North East Harbour.
We sidled below the long line of bluffs and the cave soon appeared above us; a dark, overhanging cavern offering shelter from rain and wind and the floor was dry. On Campbell Island this is a boon.
In the centre of the cave floor sat a large alloy bowl, its alloy lid anchored by a large rock. After photographs and measurements we carefully removed the rock...
-SMcM.jpg "Colin and Shelley having a well earned lunch before the final approach to the Honey summit.")
-SMcM.jpg "Colin and Shelley at the summit of Mt Honey, with Six Foot Lake in the background.")
-SMcM.jpg "Colin matching up a past photo point.")
-SMcM.jpg "Colin working on one of his plant transects along the Mt Honey ridge/saddle.")
Today dawned in spectacular fashion with calm waters and not a cloud in the sky. Given the fine, windless day and the arrival of the Orion tourist ship, a planned trip up the Col Ridge with botanist Colin Meurk was soon changed to an ascent of Mt Honey from the north face, rather than the usual track up the west flank. Mount Honey is often covered in clag (low cloud) so we had to make...
A Hydra writhed below my feet, waves’ crashed beyond my right shoulder, and somewhere high above me my pack hung off a ledge. This is adventure science in action, and easily exaggerated. With only 19 days left on the island we have to complete our field research program in less than ideal conditions. Jo, Colin and I have been at Penguin Bay this week collecting soils, plants and insects in order to study how the massive decline in Rockhopper Penguin numbers is influencing other...
Yesterday I was at the Farmhouse site, which is tucked fairly snugly (as far as any place can be called snug on Campbell) into the gently sloping southern shore of Tucker Cove. Of course the house, woolshed and store shed are long gone and only the most durable bits and the stone structures such as the old boat haul-out give any sign that this was once the centre of life on the Island.
I was painting metal preservative on the old Shacklock ‘Orion’ stove under the...
It’s interesting how one easily forgets feelings of dire dread. I’d tramped these island hills in all weathers; mapping and surveying historic sites on and off for over 30 years and the feeling of dread came to me then only once or twice - that I might not make it back to the warmth and comfort of the weather station. Now the station is automated, there is no staff - all cooking and heating facilities have been removed. We are actually camping inside a gutted building with the...
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...
There are many things that draw people to studying and exploring nature. Just being able to experience the miracle of life in the course of your work is a great privilege – even if most of the time you are desk-bound and enveloped in the tedium of writing grant applications. Anyway, I digress. This is about those moments of personal and scientific discovery – finding something never known before. These can be grandiose theories and principles; but I get a thrill out of much...
On a point at the head of Northeast Harbour on Campbell Island are well preserved remains of the 1911-14 Cook whaling station. The island was the last frontier of the New Zealand right whale industry, which began in the 1820s at Preservation Inlet and Te Awaiti, Tory Channel. In only a few years most stations brought to an end the ancient winter use of their bay or harbour by calving female right whales. For 30 years before 1964 not a single right whale was reported on the New Zealand...
Early botanists exploring Campbell Island were astounded by the lush herbaceous plants that they called megaherbs. Megaherbs encompass a diverse array of plants including Bulbinella, Stilbocarpa, and Anisotome, but the large showy daisies in the genus Pleurophyllum are arguably the most striking. Three species are included in the genus, which is endemic to the subantarctic islands. All three are found on Campbell Island. They hybridize in various combinations, which suggests reproductive...
With nearly 50 species, New Zealand is the centre of diversity for the genus Dracophyllum. Dracophyllum longifolium ranges widely on the mainland of New Zealand, but is also found on Stewart, Auckland and Campbell Islands, whereas D. scoparium has a perplexing distribution being found both on the Chatham Islands and Campbell Island, but not on the mainland.
At low elevations on Campbell Island they form almost impenetrable dwarf forests, which can reach up to 5 meters high, but...
The freshwater team has just returned from a sampling trip to the Hooker Valley (a.k.a. Starvation Valley) in the far north of Campbell Island. It was known as Starvation Valley in the past because its steep sides meant that once you were in the valley bottom, it would be difficult to get back out. Here we spent three nights in Sorensen Hut (a.k.a. Bull Rock Hut) while sampling four sites along the length of Hooker Stream.
The Hooker Valley is relatively flat bottomed with a steep...
The altercation with the Sea Lion described in my previous blog prompted my reflection upon how the environment mediates human social relationships. It also disrupted our plans. Leaving the veg plots for a day we encountered this creature en-route to one of the islands’ peaks, Mt Paris, where we planned to retake photographs of the landscape pictured in 1907 by the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury. Focused, as we were, on getting around this Bull we mistook a Sea Lion track for...
Most plants perished from Antarctica as global temperatures cooled and the ice sheets advanced. Cushion plants and mosses were among the last plants to perish. Although the precise stratigraphical sequence and dates are controversial, fossil remains suggest that they may have persisted until the Pliocene Epoch about ten million years ago.
Cushion plants form expansive communities on Campbell Island. It is conceivable these plants are the descendants of Antarctic tundra vegetation....
A number of exotic plants have become established and persist on Campbell Island. They are mostly associated with homestead or campsites or along tracks. The most common are range grasses such as Poa pratensis, Kentucky bluegrass, Festuca rubra, red fescue, or Anthoxxanthum odoratum, sweet vernal grass. A few such as Cerastium fontanum are found in coastal habitats at the high tide line or tussock or megaherb communites. They are mostly perennial herbs or grasses with seeds or fruits that...
-SMcM.jpg "The jigsaw puzzle in its infancy (and still not yet finished).")
What do Lichens have to do with people? This was a question I puzzled over as I attempted to write a blog that would allow me to showcase photographs of cool Lichens taken while momentarily sidetracked from my focus on the study of humans. The first lichen I noticed I thought looked like coral—my developing appreciation of lichens trailing my enjoyment of diving. I guess one can only group a new thing in relation with the kinds of things one already knows about.
As I...
One of the simplest and most effective ways of visualising and evaluating change in vegetation is to go back to where historic photos were taken and take the exact same shot. It is amazing to see history happen in front of your eyes. We are fortunate in having many old photographs taken around Campbell Island going back as far as the 1880s – before there was much human-caused change in the vegetation. This is a bit of a base line.
As an example (I will provide some better...
It is widely accepted that sympatric speciation occurs, but it has rarely been demonstrated and the process is not well understood; allopatric speciation (reproductive isolation by distance) being a more common mode of evolution. Island ecosystems provide a perfect venue to test these evolutionary phenomena.
Two species of Abrotanella are found on Campbell Island. Abrotanella spathulata is the more...
Well not wrangle the Rockhopper's, but I am off to monitor chick survival. It’s been 6 years since I was at Penguin Bay, and the photos here date from then. In that short time it’s likely the population of Pengs has continued to decline, an ongoing trend since the 1940s.
I’m heading over to the Bay, about a 6 hour tramp across the heart of Campbell Island, to help out Kyle Morrison, a Canadian PhD student studying Rockhopper Penguin decline as part of a NIWA...
On Dec 24 Mark Crompton and I set out on a botanical expedition to the saddle between Mt Azimuth and Mt Fizeau. These two peaks roughly bisect Campbell Island and offer outstanding views to the north and south. As the albatross glides it is only about three kilometres to the saddle, but the track winds through dwarf Dracophyllum forest, boggy tussocks, megaherbs and alpine tundra fellfields near the saddle.
Mark is a fine companion; I’d trust him with my life. He walks at a...
Jo (our DOC rep) was back from helping out two phd students on the island with us, so Alex James and I invited her along when we put out the sticky and pitfall traps along Tucker Stream, to show her what stream ecologists get up to – when we are not sampling in streams that is.
With the thick Dracophyllum, we were crawling through the undergrowth to get to 20m out from the stream to set up our traps (at 0m, 10m and 20m from the stream); in such situations it's always good...
What am I doing down here – 41 years since I first set foot on Campbell Island? I originally came down as a callow youth to set up a vegetation monitoring programme for recording the way plants responded to the eradication of sheep. This was carried out progressively between 1970 (northern part of Island), 1984 (all but southeastern tip of Island) and early 1990s when the last one was removed.
We are going back to check all those plots, transect lines and photo points (...
The island’s Albatross species have been key players in the history of ecology in the region with a banding program established during World War II by Jack Sorensen, a naturalist stationed on the island as a coastwatcher. Over the ensuing years MetService staff, scientists and most recently international volunteers have continued this (and other) ornithological research.
I recently spent 6 days assisting current Albatross research during which time I learnt how to handle...
Rats like to gobble creepy crawly things (insects). But which ones do they like to gobble the most? And of those favourites, have any endured down here on Campbell Island? It’s now almost a decade since the furry devils were eradicated from the island, so no longer are things like the giant weevils and the local weta subject to regular chompings.
This series of nets is a replica of an experiment run in 1960; by comparing records from then to now I can see which insects have...
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...
-SMcM.jpg "Camp Stream at the first wee pool and waterfall we came across.")
-SMcM.jpg "A deep pool and foam creating patterns on the surface.")
With some favourable weather on the forecast we travelled a bit further afield (but not too far) over to Camp Cove and up Camp Stream. On our way were many sea lion encounters – they seem invariably intrigued in these two neoprene-clad bipeds that like to hang out in the streams like they do. We clearly are not that interesting however, as after a few minutes of sniffing they are off again to do their own thing.
We found Camp Stream to be a delightful tannin-stained waterway...
.jpg "It would be interesting to know whether our nets are used more for warding off sea lions than actually sampling. Alex James is doing a top job in gently suggesting to this very curious sea lion (via the kick net) that the pack is off-limits. It wouldn’t do for a sea lion to have off with our samples. And at least this one looks a decent size – unlike the cute female that had Carla and Alex F bailed up…")
.jpg "And finally, Shelley is there to make sure the rocks are scrubbed clean (we can’t have dirty rocks now), with the kick net downstream to catch all those tiny chironomids and blackflies (like the ‘sandflies’ that abound on the West Coast of NZ) that live on the rocks in the fast-flowing water.")
Campbell Island is not really the place for fishnet stockings but nets are in this season. We know there are nets out across the oceans, possibly harming the fish stocks that the penguins and albatrosses dine out on. But here on the Bicentennial Expedition to Campbell there are smaller fish to fry – and some bigger!
The next thing I saw these heroic freshwater biologists doing was scrubbing the rocks for algae-inhabiting insects and crustaceans and then measuring the rocks;...
On December 14th the tourist boat ‘Tiama’ sailed into Perseverance Harbour and set anchor. As this boat has a small inflatable with outboard, we were presented with the opportunity to visit a nearby, but difficult to access (by foot) stream on the opposite side of the harbour. The skipper, Henk, kindly agreed to collect us from the wharf on the morning of the 15th, drop us off at the stream mouth, and collect us late in the afternoon. Also joining Shelley and I was botanist...
-SMcM.jpg "The start of Tucker Stream including its own gate-keeper. The stream was only this open for 20m before the canopy closes in and makes upstream walking more interesting.")
-SMcM.jpg "The old Coastwatchers hut next to our second site (to the right of the photo).")
Following a couple of days of very cold and windy weather the freshwater team got their field program underway. This initially involves concentrating on the nearby streams that can be done as day trips from the base. Later we will move on to the logistically challenging streams further away from base.
On Tuesday (Dec 14th) we started off with a trip to Tucker Stream, the mouth of which is only 20 minutes walk from base. This stream’s valley is of historic interest (as well...
Campbell Island, a small dot located in the furious fifties, is of immense importance to professional scientists and amateur naturalists alike. These intrepid present day voyagers brave rough seas and a hostile climate to experience the unique flora and fauna. Over the next nine weeks I’ll be studying the people who visit this remote location to answer questions about how they relate to the social and natural environment that surrounds them. In addition to my study of others, this...
_1.png){kind=logo}
