South Georgia Island - Tuesday, March 1
When last heard from we were in the caldera lagoon of Deception Island off the Antarctica Peninsula. We chugged away in the evening and overnight reached Penguin Island, another island further North along the Antarctic Peninsula. There is a small colony of gentoo and chinstrap penguins on the island but the weather was bleak and the fog very thick so I decided to rest my kayaking aches and pains and stay aboard.
Leaving Penguin Island we then spent the next two days and nights sailing north-east to arrive at South Georgia Island on Sunday Feb 27. There are no words to properly describe South Georgia but a good start can be made by looking out a Richard Attenborough video on YouTube called, not surprisingly, South Georgia Island. It is well worth finding and gives a wonderful picture of a unique spot on the planet. It is distinctive for a number of indigenous species not found anywhere else but equally for the way it has risen above its early colonisation and reestablished its ecology and its wildlife.
The island, uninhabited save for its abundant wildlife, was first discovered in the 1600’s by a Dutch trader/explorer and was left undisturbed until its rediscovery by James Cook in 1775 who claimed it for Britain and who named it for George III, the then reigning monarch. At the same time in 1775 events were taking place in the American Colonies which would lead shortly thereafter to their breaking away from Britain. It’s ironic that George III would lose the American Colonies while gaining a tiny speck of land in the Southern Ocean, a trade that I’m sure he would have happily reversed, or maybe not!
South Georgia is a faraway place indeed, about 2000k east of South America and about 1500k north of Antartica nonetheless it was well suited as a base for Antarctic exploration as well as for whaling and the fur seal trade.
After its rediscovery it quickly became a natural resource to be exploited and British and American whalers and fur sealers removed prodigious quantities of those species, an estimated 150,000 whales for whale oil and almost the entire world population of fur seals, to meet fashion’s demands. Because of their tame and trusting nature untold thousands of penguins were slaughtered for food as sailors could walk up to them and kill them where they stood. In return for directly decimating much of the wildlife the sailors introduced rats and other small vermin as well as non-indigenous plant life which could outcompete the local grasses and vegetation and which in their turn have continued the legacy of destruction.
And so things stood until the very recent past when the government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, a British Overseas Territory, created a marine exclusion zone around South Georgia to protect the unique marine ecosystem. After years of strenuous work, reindeer which had been introduced by Norwegian whalers for food and sport and which had put pressure on the local ecosystem, were eradicated as well as the rat and cat populations and many of the invasive plant species. This was an enormously expensive set of activities and so to ensure that no invasive species are introduced in the future, the government has made landing on the island a very detailed and exacting process. Every bit of external clothing, coat, boots, waterproof trousers, hat, gloves as well as camera bags, tripods, walking sticks anything likely to come in contact with the ground or the vegetation needs to be vacuumed thoroughly, the treads of boots must be cleaned with a screwdriver to remove any material, velcro fastenings must be pristine, and everything coming in contact with the ground must be scrubbed and disinfected. Velcro is particularly problematic as are seams of clothing, any hidden places where seeds may be accidentally carried to the island and become an invasive species. Camera bags or backpacks may not be put on the ground but must be carried. Getting ready to land is a major project, as it should be.
All these steps have allowed wildlife populations to re-establish themselves and now the largest populations of fur seals and king penguins in the world roost on South Georgia as well as huge numbers of seabirds, which can now safely breed on the island. Their numbers are so great that at night our boat is required to go into blackout with all windows curtained and shuttered so no light can escape which might attract birds to land on the ship. Each morning any birds that have landed on the boat during the night must be counted and identified and reported back to the territorial government.
Another claim to fame for South Georgia is its close association with Earnest Shackleton, one of the foremost explorers of the Antarctic who died aboard his ship in South Georgia in 1922 as he was preparing for another expedition to Antarctica. He is buried on the island and his tombstone has become a place of pilgrimage for students of and lovers of Antarctic history.
I had started to tell you about my visit to the island but got so caught up ints history that I’m afraid I’ve overstayed my welcome, so I’ll save that story for my next post.
More to come!
