Day 10 – Spring Cleaning

InBounties-Antipodes 2022, Field workBySite admin

The second day on the island is primarily used to get set up in and around the hut. The solar panels are taken out of the castaway depot and installed…

…a new pole mount for the Starlink unit is installed on the roof…

Starlink – amazing how a dish the size of a pizza tray can provide broadband internet in the middle of the southern ocean.

…the main access paths are cleared around the hut with an industrial-grade weed eater…

Jeff cutting a track into the thick tussock and Hannah not having any of it, acoustically, that is.

…water supplies are checked and the hut’s spouting is reconnected – not that this seems to make much of a difference, as there has yet to fall a spot of rain. Instead it is yet another misty day.

Low mist hanging over Anchorage Bay in the morning.

In the morning, Richie and James come over from the Evohe, for another few hours of albatross photography and VR video recording. They get back to the hut around lunchtime and we help them get their gear down to the rock platform in Anchorage Bay where Simon is already waiting.

The NZ Geographic team leaves the island with the Evohe waiting in the mist.

It is the final good bye as the Evohe weighs the anchor after lunch and disappears into the fog. We are on our own. In the late afternoon, we venture through the tussock towards Stella Bay. although just about 100m to the East of the hut, it takes us almost 30 minutes to get there. The chest deep tussock makes moving about truly challenging. in Stella Bay we are somewhat baffled by the low number of penguins breeding here. Instead of the 222+ nest that were here in 2014, we only see a bit over 60 nests. Not good.

We find only a quarter of the expected Erect-crested penguin nests in Stella Bay.

Before long the day comes to a close. Starlink operates really well providing us with broadband internet which most of the team use for video chats with friends and families.