A Whale of an Atlantic Adventure

6th April 2012

SOTW  made a brief stop in Vigo (NW Spain) to drop off Richard and pick up new team members, Alexa and Kerry.  We left Vigo bound for the Azores on a beautiful calm morning, lit by the pink hues of the rising sun.

It wasn’t long before the team sighted bottlenose dolphins leaping and frolicking around 200 meters from the boat. Soon after, two pilot whales were seen logging at the surface. For many on board this was the first time they had seen pilot whales, but the encounter was just about to get better. Five more pilot whales (including a mother and her calf) then swam towards the boat and began to bow ride SOTW. The water was so calm and clear that they could easily be seen swimming around and darting underneath the boat with jets of bubbles streaming behind them. An incredible start to the journey.

Since then the wind speed has picked up which has been perfect for sailing however the sighting conditions have deteriorated. Despite this the team have sighted striped dolphins, common dolphins (including a calf still showing its foetal folds), fin whales and they have heard sperm whales clicking through the hydrophone.

Five days into their journey the team our getting into the swing of life on the ocean. Sleeping patterns have been adjusted to allow for keeping watch all times of the day and night, sea legs have been gained and ropes are being learnt.

(Another blog post for the MCR website)

 After three great weeks conducting research around the Azores, it was time for us to leave the islands and say goodbye to some wonderful people. Odd jobs completed, hydrophones fixed, boat cleaned, food shopped for (over three hours of trawling the supermarket!) and at last Song of  the Whale and her crew could set sail for America.

The weather in the first few days was great for sailing, however not so  helpful for  spotting whales. The wind picked up and the swell increased leaving us rattling and rolling around the boat. Michelle (our student from the Department of Fisheries in the Azores) cooked us a fantastic soup on the roughest day, though unfortunately most of it ended up in our laps.

Fin Whale

Once the weather calmed down, we were able to assess and begin to sort out the main sail which had developed a rip overnight, and we began to see some cetaceans again.

Our first cetacean sighting was of a sperm whale logging at the surface around 200 meters from our boat. We have been hearing  sperm whales clicking for most of our journey so far, the ocean is alive with sound!

We have also seen common and striped dolphins (some bow riding with us at night, casting trails of bioluminescence behind them), fin whales and even a blue whale. It is amazing that in this vast ocean our path crosses with the world’s largest living creature. Some good photo ID shots were taken and we could see that it had a chunk of its dorsal fin missing.

Bermuda to Boston...... To be continued....

A Princess Story on The Farallones

The Princess was slightly blue. Not quite a deep royal blue but more a soft baby blue. Today was the day that marked only seventeen days left on the island.

How on earth is it possible for her to leave an island that she has learnt to call home? An island where she’s lived in the pockets of her dear Farallon family for three and a half months.  A place that she will probably never again get to visit.

These thought troubled the Princess deeply as she sat writing in her journal at Queens Bath and watching the skittish and adorable harbour seals. But alas, she was not to sit around moping about what was yet to happen. Instead she wanted to make the most of every second and appreciate every fine-tuned work of art Mother Nature presented.

The Princess has so much she wants to tell everyone back home, yet there is so little time and there are so few words that can encapsulate her experience.

She could tell you about the elephant seals giving birth to disorientated and weak pups that then grow into huge barrels of blubber, so fat that they can barely move for their rolls of fat, often losing their balance and rolling down the slope.

She could tug at your heart strings by telling you of little -26 pup, who after being adopted by Lodi (who also had her own porker of a pup) was weaned prematurely and is so small that she will not survive (yet she does seem happy, surrounded by playmates).

She could tell you about the extreme scrambling her and her friends did to get to Great Murre cave, Jewel cave and funky arch and all the other incredible intertidal areas around the island with abalones, giant anemones, sea stars,

goose barnacles, mussels and a monkey faced eel.

She could also tell you about the necropsies performed on elephant seals and Californian sea lions.     

She could describe to you the hilarious games of balderdash she and her Farallon family have played with terms such as 'duddyfunk' that have taken on a whole new meaning...

And the burrowing owls who are gracing the island with their presence (Despite the fact that they are eating all the Ashy storm petrels).

But what she will tell you about is just one simple morning. A morning of no great importance.

No coastguard helicopter landed on the island. 100 or so Brown pelicans did not congregate on the grass outside the house this morning. No immature elephant seals wiggled their way up the cart path. There were no gale force winds rattling the rafters and in fact there were barely any gulls. Yet it is this morning that the Princess wishes to share with you.

It was 6am and the Princess was awoken by the distant call of an alarm clock coming from Master Ryan’s room next door. She turned over, blissfully aware that she did not have to get up for at least another hour. 7am arrived and after a whale fuelled dream she gets out of bed and eases herself into the morning.

Master Ryan, Lady Jane and his Lordship Jason are out collecting the mouse traps and so the Princess has the whole house to herself. Kettle boils and a pot of coffee is made. She sets out with her toasted English muffin (one half peanut butter and apricot jam, the other marmite and avocado).

Scooping up her book she steps outside into the day. The sun is slowly creeping out from behind the hill gently warming her left cheek. The previous day’s 30 knot winds have all but ceased to blow and she is presented with a gentle breeze ruffling her hair.

As she begins to digest the sights and sounds of the morning she sees a grey whale feeding off of saddle rock. Soon after, she sees another swimming purposefully towards West end island.

After the previous night’s rain everything seems somehow clearer. She sees every blade of grass and every pearl of barley still damp, yet to be warmed by the morning sun. As the whales silently pass by the gulls start to shriek and murmur, pulling grass from one another’s territory showing off to all the lady gulls. Just then a yellow-rumped warbler flits by, perching itself on a convenient branch. A high pitched clucking is heard from an elephant seal pup and its mother responds with her deep barking call. The distant relentless whooping from the Californian sea lions also permeates through the morning along with the hooting of Canada geese.

She sips on her freshly ground, hot coffee with a splash of cream and sighs with contentment.

“I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything”

Bit o' Rough and Tumble

Love is in the air…Well, for the elephant seals at least.

It’s reached that time when Alpha male Rusty and all the other surrounding males start to get their groove on and make moves on the ladies. The ladies don’t have much of a say in the matter and I’d hardly call it romantic, but they get the job done and this time next year the cows will be back again with yet more pups.

So in my other blog posts perhaps I painted a pretty picture of elephant seal life. The pups were very cute and the mothers doted on their every need. Males rumbled to fend off rivals and there were hummingbirds and rainbows and pretty things. Well since then things have become pretty gnarly.

Herzog



Rusty the alpha male

MC Hammer

Testosterone entered the camp and the males started to get a little too full of themselves, throwing their weight around (of which there is a considerable amount … up to 2000kg!) and showing off to the ladies.








Cows started bickering, fighting with their handbags, biting each other’s pups and gulls descended from the sky to come and feast upon the open wounds festering on the poor baby seals.
 A pleasant picture I am creating for you I am sure. Welcome to the Farallones.

So about a week ago we witnessed our first ‘proper’ fight between bull male elephant seals. We had just come to the end of our morning survey and Jason and I headed back to the house to collect the weather data. Ryan and Jane decided to stay a while longer at Sand Flat to look out for some more cows to identify. As they were searching all hell suddenly broke loose and Herzog and MC Hammer started to fight. Jane then radioed us to let us know and so we flew to Sand Flat as fast as we could caper to see what was going on.

As we reached the commotion we witnessed MC Hammer and Herzog sizing each other up as shown in the photo. Each one would then take his opportunity to bite into the other throwing his whole body into the manoeuvre.

It was pretty intense stuff. Then just as it looked as though Herzog was getting the upper hand and was potentially going to beat MC Hammer the pup-crushing,-weaner-mauling brute of a male (when we talk of ‘weaners’ we are referring to the pups that have weaned… Just in case there is some confusion!) the old dog Rusty (alpha male of sand flat for over four years!) shows up and the two fighting males start to tremble in their oversized boots.
Rusty hurtles after them… Well hurtles as much as an elephant seal can hurtle... This generally means one short burst of movement followed by a couple of minutes of recuperation, getting ones breath back, then another short burst of movement followed by yet more slumping and recovering. Herzog narrowly misses having his guts for garters and sneaks away relatively unscathed.  MC Hammer however is a little too slow on the uptake (he does have a blind left eye.. we’ll let him off) and gets a right royal bashing from Rusty. The two of them continue this way, with MC Hammer running for the water while Rusty is close on his tail giving him the occasional bite in the rear. They then get to the water and the fight continues until we can see them no more.

All this over a few females

Meanwhile, we celebrated our valentines day island style. Through the medium of food.

Chocolate truffles and carrot cake for breakfast lunch and dinner anyone?

Carrot cake lovingly made by Jane

Five and half hours of scrubbing gull poo off the catchment pad in the rain... The things we'll do for drinking water

I am scrubbing in the middle of a rather muddy puddle,

with my bottoms full of bubbles and my wellies full of mud.

While my jacket and my sweater go on slowly getting wetter

and I very slowly settle to the bottom of the mud.

Now I find that what a person, with a puddle round his middle

thinks of mostly in the muddle is the muddyness of mud.

I saw 10,000 gulls on Christmas day, on Christmas day in the morning

My baggy men’s trousers are getting tight. Christmas food was just far too abundant and delicious, although saying that, all the food we eat is delicious and in abundance. Hence why my trousers are snug.

The festive period on Southeast Farallon Island was simply wonderful. Christmas away from loved ones had potential to be a sad and lonely affair, especially spending it on a rock in the North Pacific Ocean with only three other people. But it was far from sad or lonely and as Ryan put it “if you can’t be with those you love, love the ones you are with.”

I awoke on Christmas morning to the sound of squawking gulls at the glorious time of 6.30am. I had taken Jane’s place at doing the gull count as I love nothing more than counting the gulls early in the morning. Being out in the fresh air as the sun rises as I sing to the gulls many a morning/Christmas themed song. I’m sure the gulls appreciate my singing; I know my house mates do.

 After I had counted a few thousand gulls I returned to the house where I discovered, much to my delight that Father Christmas had been in the night and delivered presents for all us good little girls and boys!

So open our presents we did and I received such nice gifts from my Farallon family. Jason was very generous and gave us each a penknife and torch, Jane gave to me some super cute socks with seals on them along with some Russian candy and Ryan spoilt us with a PRBO hoodie, hat and tote bag… Oh and a plastic squeaky shark toy from off the shelf, that I’m not actually allowed to keep.

I also opened a wondeful parcel from home which contained
many a gift wrapped item, before chatting to the family on
skype which was lovely.

We carried out the elephant seal census around the island and then continued to spend the majority of the day gorging ourselves on food.

Full English breakfast...

 mid-afternoon cheese platter...

... Then stuffing in a roasted pumpkin, roast spuds, pigs in blankets, a mahoosive ham …. A minute slither of Christmas pud each with lashings of custard and ‘chocolate air’ created lovingly by Jane. Oh and I almost forgot about the vat of mulled wine.

New Year’s Eve was also great. No deliberation over what pub or whose house to go to, no overpriced drinks and crowded bars. No dilemma over what to wear, how to style your hair, no ‘does my bum look big in this?’ Here on the island Farallon fashion takes over. So we celebrated simply.

Jane cooked a Russian feast which was delicious that included pirojki which are cabbage stuffed bread rolls, blini which are pancake type wraps containing mushroom delights, a beet salad, aubergine caviar, ham salad and apple stuffed bread rolls for afters.

We then whiled away a few hours with wholesome intellectual board games, buckets full of laughter (leave the door open) and a spot of bad guitar playing on my part before heading up to the lighthouse to see in the New Year.

At the stroke of midnight we had already consumed half our bottle of champers whilst wearing our New Milton Advertiser party hats and were watching the fireworks display over San Francisco. They just looked like minuscule puffs on the horizon 28 miles away from where we stood.

 I believe our own private display was far more impressive. Each time the lighthouse flashed it illuminated gulls flying above us and the moon was low in the sky glowing eerie auburn.

So enough about food, fun and festivities, back to seals and other such wildlife

West End- A rugged peak of an island.

(Photos to come. I didn't take my camera with me so I will try to steal some from Jason ad Ryan!)

The view of West End Island from the lighthouse

The morning started off so foggy that my gull count was cancelled and so I found myself baking mince pies at 7am. As the fog began to lift, Jason, Ryan and myself set off on an adventure to West End Island whilst Jane kindly stayed behind to talk to the seals and be there just in case we got lost or squashed or eaten by the big pinnipeds.

We began by stealth walking our way past Californian sea lions, scurrying over wet wave pummelled algae covered rocks to reach Jordon’s channel.  At the channel we donned our climbing harnesses and helmets, clipped into the metal zip wire and kicked off the rock with as much gusto as we could muster to reach the other side.

I got half way and tried pulling myself along using the rope, but alas I was getting nowhere! I had a wee panic that perhaps I had eaten so much Christmas food that I was now incapable of heaving my own body weight up a rope! But then I heard Ryan shout to me and it appeared that a rope had got caught up somewhere and so I could not get any further!

Greeting us on the island was a cascade of beautiful purple and white gull guano covering an entire rock face, a dead gull and a dead Zalophus. Welcome to West End they said.

The day was then full of much scampering over rocky cliffs, much thigh burning stealth walking trying to hide from zalophus (though at times hard when you have Jason ‘too tall’ Jones in the troop!) and much much counting of seals. The reason for going to west end is to carry out a census of the seals there to gain a better understanding of how many actually inhabit the island. The majority of seals there are the Californian sea lions (zalophus) but we also came across some northern fur seals (callorhinus), steller sea lions (eumetopias) and of course our lovely elephant seals (mirounga).

For creatures that look so unsuited to a life on land it’s amazing how high some of these animals can climb. Upon summiting one of the peaks on our census we came face to face with a sub-adult male northern fur seal! It was incredible to see it so close up. Its pelage was black with grey flecks and its whiskers were like an outrageous moustache giving it the appearance of an aging man. It strutted away and we continued with our mission.

The fog was still shrouding the island, though occasionally it would lift giving us a small glimpse of what lay beyond. It really was a magical place and the fog added to this. West end is a wilderness area and so we seldom visit it. Before stepping foot on the island we scrub our shoes so as not to bring over any invasive plant species or such so that we can keep the island in its natural form, the way it is supposed to be. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience such a wild and beautiful place that is teeming with such incredible wildlife.

MC Hammer... A brute of a male. Now seemingly blind in one eye

This is the male Rumplestiltskin who frequents Sewer Gulch. Seems he got into a bit of a scrap with another male and came away with a asty wound

A couple of immature elephants seals

The fog clearing

Sand flat with seven cows and five pups ... Today we had nineteen cows and thirteen pups!

Since my last blog post we have had many new arrivals to the island, in the form of elephant seal pups! This has been very exciting although at times a trifle perplexing. Just when you think you have worked out who is whom and whose pup belongs to whom, a new day arrives and along with it a few new cows and perhaps a pup or two!

Due to the abundance of zalpohus around the elephant seal breeding grounds it has been difficult for us to stamp the females for ID purposes, this means that we end up spending HOURS in the e-seal blind (hide) painstakingly trying to read flipper tags through a scope or look for identifying features such as our unfortunate cow who has three nostrils (it seems she had a cist on her nose that became a hole… Now when she sneezes snot comes out of three nostrils) and scars that look like numerous teats. It’s ok. Rusty (Alpha male of sand flat) won’t care what she looks like and as Ryan put it “beauty is but a light switch away”

So much more to report but alas, I fear if I trail on anymore I shall lose my audience. But just before I go...

The common Murres (Guillemots) have begun arriving in their hundreds. So until next time, I shall leave you with these pictures