Sheep Shearing Day

Wayne in action.

Today is sheep shearing day on Tristan.  Families work together to shear, dose and mark their sheep quota of two sheep (plus lambs) per person. Everyone helps out – grandparents, men, women, children - even visiting botanists.  It’s a family day out.  Men use hand shears in a deft operation that is made to look easy.  But judging where fleece stops and sheep starts is tricky.  Wisely, I was given the task of catching and holding sheep down and not shearing.  (Otherwise there would have been a lot of blood.)   Old men are on light duties such as operating gates. Grandmothers sit knitting in strategically parked bakkies watching events, while younger women supply tea and sandwiches.  Children play together and collie sheep dogs run around excitedly.   There is a lot of beer, banter and playing.

No mistaking this one!

One of the final tasks is to select sheep for slaughter to bring the flock size back into line with the family quota that includes all one year plus sheep – and increases with last year’s lambs.    This is essential to limit overgrazing of the island’s pasture – which is shared with 600 odd cattle and 14 donkeys.   The limiting factor is the availability of winter grazing as there is no supplementary feed available.   Thin soils, frequent storms and extensive salt spray make growing hay or silage difficult if not impossible, and the cost of importing fodder is prohibitive.   The only exception is that milking cows are given boiled potatoes as supplementary feed – otherwise there would be little milk and no cream.   By the way I get milk delivered to my fridge straight from Sylvia’s hand-milked cow.  The top two inches of cream is a breakfast highlight on my porridge or Tesco Frosties.  

Anyway I digress.  The over quota sheep have to be slaughtered before Easter.  And generally it is sheep that are slaughtered and not the lambs as mutton is considered much more flavoursome and killing growing lambs seems wasteful.   The traditional Christmas (and Easter) dinner is stuffed roast mutton which sounds really delicious.

Earlier in the week I went to the Tristan School Christmas Nativity play.  There was standing room only in the school hall as all 32 school kids performed to parents, families and friends. I counted 140 in the audience – about half the island’s entire population.  (Many others had seen a previous performance specially laid on for the island’s pensioners.)  It was an entertaining show. But I was thinking how difficult it must be to teach such a small number of kids of all ages.  After short speeches by the Head teacher and Sean the Administrator and a rendition of the National Anthem the audience repaired to the Albatross Bar.

I mentioned last time that the Island Store closes for a month at Christmas.  What I hadn’t appreciated is that absolutely everything closes over the Christmas holiday – including the Albatross.  I now understand why bakkies are so popular on the island – they are needed to get the Christmas food and drink shopping home!  Considering the average income is about £2000 a year I saw some big bills being rung up – like £140 - and that was probably only one instalment!   My Christmas shopping included a couple boxes of posh biscuits to give folk who have been particularly kind to me.  And a 2 foot artificial Christmas tree, complete with decorations and 20 lights - bargain at £4.

Snippets:

Last time I told you about a very exciting Christmas present arriving – a hard drive with loads of films.  Well it transpires that only part of the consignment arrived.  All were posted at the same time in the UK.  Sadly there is no sign of the other packages – one of which contained Christmas pudding apparently! I hope they arrive in January, but I’m told it can take up to a year... if ever!

Another milestone in Tristan history this week – the internet is speeded up from 32 to 64 kilobytes/sec – between all 280 islanders and shared with 12 voice-over-internet telephone channels.  So it’s still slow but not quite as slow!  

I had a haircut this week.  Not easy you might think in a place where the nearest barber is 1500 miles away!   So when one of the Conservation Team lads appeared one morning sporting a neat haircut I asked how he’d done it, and arranged for Kirsty, the office clerk to cut mine too.

I previously mentioned that it’s rare to see (or hear) jets over Tristan.  I learnt this week that there is actually a scheduled service which goes over twice a week from Cape Town to Buenos Aries. But its at altitude and not always visible or audible. 

News Headlines

 

There is a lot going on just now so here are the headlines: 

Mum is well on the road to recovery after breaking her leg. She got out of hospital two weeks ago and is adjusting to living at home with the help of family - including my sister, Catherine who flew over from America - friends and health visitors.  Take care mum!

The Baltic Trader has just returned and I got the first mail from the outside world today since  September: a letter from America - thank you Catherine - and a Christmas present of a hard drive with loads of films - thank you Simon and Chris – it’s brilliant!

The microscope I ordered from GX Microscopes in September also arrived today. Excellent machine – thank you Bob!

The last day for posting Christmas mail is the 9^th December.  But given that none of the Christmas cards I sent back in early October have arrived yet, I don’t hold out much hope for the cards I'm posting now!

Official last day for shopping is the 15^th December when the one and only shop shuts until the 16^th January.  A military-precision shopping expedition is being planned.

A technician has just arrived on the Baltic Trader to speed up the internet connection.  Fantastic!

I was invited to Cedric’s 18^th birthday party on Saturday night in the village hall. Just under half the entire island population turned out. It was a bit like a highland ceilidh with every generation represented including kids and grandparents. The women tend to sit along one wall and the men stand around the bar or by the stage. Two long trestle tables were laden with savoury food and a vast array of cakes - all home made. There was also one of the biggest birthday cakes I've seen in a long time!  A great night with lively dancing and music.

Finally, back home we've got a new puppy - Rannoch.

Base Camp

Sorry for the radio silence.  I’ve been camping on one of the remotest spots on the remotest inhabited island in the world!  On the plateau above Sandy Point - the easternmost point of Tristan.  We travelled from the settlement by small boat, leaving just after bad weather cleared – and returning just before it set in again five days later.  But in case we got stranded (which we nearly did!) we took enough food, clothes and kit for a fortnight.

Carrying heavy rucksacks with survey equipment, tent, sleeping bag and food up the steep escarpment was hard work.  Especially going through Bog Fern (Blechnum palmiforme) and dense patches of Island Tree (Phylica arborea).  I’ve already mentioned how difficult it is to get through Bog Fern but that pales compared with Island Tree which forms a dense scrubby woodland tangle with fallen and standing deadwood.   (Island Tree is a member of the Rhamnaceae family and native to Tristan da Cunha group and Amsterdam and St Paul in the Southern Indian Ocean.)  It’s just as well my South African work partner is pretty handy with a machete.  I followed him in a hail of wood chips and cut branches!

Sunrise over Tristan

The soft spongy ground also makes the going hard.  It is quite amazing.  Slow-decaying mosses (including Spagnum recurvum), lichens, ferns and flowering plants make a dry light peat.  It sinks 4 inches with every step and makes normal tent pegs useless.  Pity we hadn’t anticipated that!  So we improvised with long wooden stakes and guys tied to trees and ferns.  A nesting Atlantic Yellow-billed Albatross (Molly) and several tame house mice shared the site.

Dinner with mice and mollys.

After a good night’s kip and a breakfast of porridge oats and cold water we set off at 6.30 for a full day’s survey work.  Apart from the wildlife and scenery a highlight of the day is lunch.  It’s amazing how good 5 day old sandwiches can be.  Mind you, home-made brown bread, with cheese, roast tomatoes, lettuce and Mrs Ball’s fine chutney does make an excellent sandwich. Oh aye, and big slices of home-made fruit tea cake!  We return 12 hours later after only covering a few kilometres to write up notes, process data, press plant specimens and have dinner (spaghetti al ragu) before dusk.  

Bootlace Fern (Radiovittaria ruiziana)

The flora was different from what we had seen elsewhere. This side of the island is in the lea of the prevailing westerly’s and the vegetation is more luxuriant, creating a humid microclimate – particularly in narrow gulleys or ‘gutters’ – for some of the rarer ferns like Athyrium medium and Hypolepis rugulosa. Though both of these were still unfurling and may have been overlooked previously.  For the first time, we saw Cardamine glacialis and the endemic Ranunculus caroli in flower.  It was great seeing several big populations of Trichomanes angustatum and abundant Hymenophyllum tunbrigense but puzzling to only very rarely find the brilliantly named endemic, Bootlace Fern (Radiovittaria ruiziana).

Typically we recorded about 50 species in a 1 km square. A few are dominant (like Bog Fern and Island Tree) or abundant (like Island Berry (Empetrum rubrum) and fern species Blechnum penna-marina and Ctenitis aquilina) but most are only occasional or rare. In this area there are few non-natives. The most widespread is Yorkshire Fog, locally called Farm Grass (Holcus lanatus).  All others are rare and only found in the gutters and gulches. They include Mouse-ear Chickweed (Cerastium fontanum), Sheep’s Sorrel (Rumex acetosella) and Common Dock (R. obtusifolius).

The Descent to Sandy Point

After an exciting boat journey, we returned to a ritual round of everyone's house to thank the crew and skipper and celebrate a safe return with a beer (or two).   And, for me, presents of home-made cakes, bread, mutton and even a roast beef dinner!  The islanders are amazingly kind and generous.

Sounds of Silence?

You might think that the remotest inhabited island in the world is a silent place. Far from it. Wind noise is pervasive. The mean wind speed is 40km/hour.  When the wind is strong the New Zealand flax shelter belts makes additional thrashing noise. Rain frequently accompanies wind – and it sounds really heavy on the village’s corrugated steel roofs. If you can't hear wind or rain then almost certainly you hear the South Atlantic Ocean swell crashing onto Tristan's rocky volcanic shores. The ocean is very rarely calm and it’s a very peaceful noise to fall asleep to. The sound travels far.  One of the few times I've not heard wind or waves was 1100 metres up and well back from the edge of the base.

Tristan has one of the highest rates of vehicle ownership of any country in the world. Surprising you might think when there is only about 4 km of tarred road and a similar length of dirt track. All the vehicles seemed to be owned by men and I’m sure it is a status thing. The vehicles are mostly 125cc motorbikes and 4x4 bakkies (pickup trucks). So for about ten minutes every morning there is regular traffic noise. Fishing days, when government offices close and the men go fishing, are heralded at 4.30am by the ringing of the ‘dong’ - an old red gas cylinder near the Albatross pub.  Suddenly there is a stream of traffic heading to the harbour and later in the day, when the catch is landed a siren calls workers to the fish processing factory.

Tristan men at work

We heard a very rare noise this week - a jet!  Tristan is not on any scheduled flight path and it is very unusual to hear jets. Such events are reported in the local newspaper. While jets are rare we do have a natural equivalent - the low-flying albatross!  Which makes an astonishing and beautiful whooshing noise. They seem to aim for humans but unlike the Antarctic Skuas there is no menace – just curiosity.  It’s spring here but there is no dawn chorus as neither of the two breeding landbirds on Tristan nest in the settlement.  But I’ll tell you more about Starchies and Island Cocks another time - both of which are quite noisy.

On Wednesday we heard another rare sound - gunshot - as we watched island men kill then butcher a bullock.  There are no abattoirs on the island, so when the meat supply runs low a sheep or bullock is culled – often in some remote part of the island.  No easy task as livestock is very wary of men with guns (sensibly) and runs fast in the opposite direction.  But the men seem to enjoy the hunt.   In less than 30 minutes deft work with knives and axe, the beast was skinned, disembowelled, quartered and bagged up for the return journey to the settlement by boat. We were camping in a hut nearby and were kindly given some beef for our braai (barbeque).  Very nice too - if a bit chewy. 

We fell asleep to the sound of breaking waves, distant fur seals and rats rustling round the hut.

Fur Seals taken a little earlier in the day.

PS Exciting news – visitors from the outside world! A broken down round-the-world racing yacht is due to limp into Tristan harbour tomorrow morning. 

For full story now see http://www.tristandc.com/newsmarmostro.php

Harder than the Hardest Thing?

I've mentioned the landscape before - it is truly fantastic!  A 2,000 metre high volcanic cone, often snow clad, surrounded by a high plateau (the base) around 1000m which is very deeply incised by numerous river valleys (called gulches) ending up with cascading waterfalls over a great escarpment which completely encircles the island and leaves only a narrow coastal plain in a few places.  In places the escarpment plunges straight down to the sea or leaves only the narrowest boulder beaches. 

The lush vegetation on the base and escarpment is dominated by ferns or trees.  More specifically Island Tree (Phylica arborea) and Bog Fern (Blechnum palmiforme).  The tree is rarely more than 3 or 4 metres high and forms dense thicket which are amost impenetrable - though we have yet to experience the most impenettrable Phylica on the more sheltered western side of the island.  The Bog Fern is more like a tree fern - it can be 2 metres tall with a stem 15cm in diameter and has very stiff branches.  More usually it is about a metre high and when growing close together makes walking through the interlocking branches tiring. The ground itself is spongey and very uneven and the fallen and hidden trunks of Bog fern are an additional hazard.

The Bog Fern is amazing as it is host to an entire community of ferns and flowering plants. These grow epiphytically  on the 'trunks'  getting support only but nutrients and water from the enviroment.  They include some very interesting species - including one of the few native to both Tristan and the British Isles - Tunbridge Filmy-fern (Hymenophyllum tunbrigense).  It is just one of three Filmy-ferns in that habitat.

We start early and finish late each day to maximise our time on the Base and with ascents and descents so steep that there are fixed ropes in places.  We traverse Bog Fern and Island Tree habitats and the numerous deep gulches to get to and from our survey areas carrying heavy rucksacks full of survey equipment, food and clothes for four seasons that are often put to the test.  SAS training must be easier!  

In future we will set up camp on the Base (Base camp - literally!) to minimise commuting time and effort.  But the weather must improve first and we need more grass and sedge species to flower to be able to confidently identify and survey - particularly at altitude.  About a quarter of Tristan's flora are grasses or sedges - and many that are found nowhere else (endemic).   At least our tents have just arrived - even if the microscope and other equipment from Kew have failed to materialise.  Before then we hope to take boats to the remoter parts of the island and stay in privately-owned huts  (holiday homes for islanders) and use them as bases for survey work.

In Britain you take good maps for granted. There is no such luxury here - only crude small-scale contour maps and aerial photographs - none of which show the grid squares we are surveying accurately.  None show paths accurately - and they are often the only way up and down the escarpment and the easiest ways around the Base.  And none are georeferenced properly so we are not able to plot routes and plant populations precisely.

My blog has made the island sound very exotic but the reality of working here is that it is hard. Very hard. Harder than anything I've ever done before.  Maybe I should have entitled the blog Harder than the Hardest Thing?

PS I've got some exciting news. We think we found the endemic rush species Rostkovia tristanensis on Thursday. TBC but if correct the first time it has been recorded on Tristan since a Norwegian Expedition survey in 1938. It was in a completely different place from their first record. The species is also known from Gough Island some 350km distant. For the botanists amongst you it looks a bit like Juncus biglumis except that it grows in acidic wet montane heath with Empetrum rubrum, Lycopodium insularis and numerous small sedge and grass species.

Here is a link to more information http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/43903/0

Further than the Furthest Thing

You may have pondered the strange blog address.  It obviously refers to the island's remoteness.   But it is more than that;  I first learnt about Tristan da Cunha by watching a play entitled Further than the Furthest Thing at the Tron ten years ago.  (It was also staged at the Traverse and toured around the highlands and islands.)   Here is a synopsis:  On a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic secrets are buried. When the outside world comes calling, intent on manipulation for political and economic reasons, the islanders find their own world blown apart from the inside as well as beyond. A beautifully drawn story evoking the sadness and beauty of a civilisation in crisis.  If you are interesting you can catch it at the Ljubljana City Theatre, in Slovenia in April 2012.

Talking about remoteness, it has seemed pretty remote here recently.  My mum (85) fell and broke her leg badly a couple weeks ago.  Just the sort of thing one fears most about being stuck on such an isolated island.  Even in an emergency there is no medical evacuation.  Seriously injured or ill islanders are patched up and have to wait for the next scheduled ship.  Which is about once every month or two.  Or hope for a passing ship - and there are not many of them!  Anyway no sooner than I'd heard the news all communications were cut off for an anxious four days.

I'm very pleased and relieved to be able to report that she was up and walking the day after her 3 hour op and transferred to a local hospital within days.  There it is much easier for the family and village support network to swing into full force. Apparently she has even been conducting WRI meetings from her bedside.  (Get well soon, mum!)

On the same theme of remoteness...I've been without any fresh green vegetables for two weeks now.  But yesterday the MV Edinburgh arrived and managed to unload.  The supermarket was bustling with excitement and activity today and full of such exotica as pumpkin, squash, peppers, avocados, tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, pears and pineapple.  There were even some barely blackened bananas!   I counted at least five bakkis (South African and local word for pickup truck) parked outside at once! So I went on a massive shopping spree.  What I buy now will have to last until whenever the next ship arrives and unloads in mid December.  I've unpacked my cache carefully and adjusted fridge temperature to optimise vegetable longevity.  Two degrees Centigrade I think might do it - unless anyone knows better?

Rockhoppers and Fur Seals

I saw my first Rockhopper Penguin today. Well two of them to be precise. They really do hop around rocks - unlike the African Penguins I saw near Cape Town which tend to stroll around rather nonchalantly.  But Rockhoppers are much more endearing - they have orange and red ear tufts and look pretty comical.  I'll upload a photo when I get a chance.  And I almost stood on a sleeping fur seal. (Not advised - they can be quite vicious!)  I don't know who got the bigger fright. But when sleeping they look remarkably like rocks on the boulder beach.

Possibly never in the history of plant recording has so much effort gone into recording so few plants. Today we decided to survey a 1km square which includes 'the ponds' - a series of three large lake filled volcanic craters on the north-east side of the island. Clearly visible on Google Earth - check it out.  We set off at 6.45am and walked up the incredibly steep Pigbyte path.  Its so steep that in places there are ropes to help you up. The going is hard because the ground is covered by a thin layer of peat and is very spongey. Anyway by 8.15am we were on the Base - the 2,500 foot plateau which encircles the 6,000 foot peak at the centre of the island (covered in fresh snow this week). The path then continues up to 3,000 feet before descending to the highest pond. It was great walking on a path on the Base - we've seldom had that luxury.  We walked along the narrow ridge between the middle and the highest pond. What a great sense of place!

After spending some time with a large flock of loafing Yellow-nosed albatrosses - you can almost stroke them they are so tame! - we descended through our target survey area. From about 2,000 feet to sea level - through almost impenetrable scrub on a landscape of steep slopes, deep ravines and sudden drops.  The going is very slow, difficult and dangerous. In places my rucksack would touch the ground behind me because it was so steep - and because my rucksack is stuffed full of survey equipment, gear for four seasons and usually - although not by then - a big packed lunch!

There are not many species to record on Tristan - it is so remote not many made it here (at least not without the help of man).  The flora has a high proportion of grasses and sedges, few of which are in flower.  We struggle to identify them from remnants of last year's flowers and fruits.  From there we had a level 3km walk back to Edinburgh of the Seven Seas.  Easy you might think - wrong!! It was possibly even more dangerous than the higher ground. We had to walk along along a narrow strip of boulder beach, between a literally crumbling, near vertical cliff face and huge South Atlantic waves crashing in over the entire beach in places.  It was here we saw the penguins and seals.

Stats: 12 hour day. 10 mile walk, 3,000 foot climb: 55 species recorded, plus a number of vegetation quadrats surveyed and 4 herbarium specimens collected. A botanist's lot is not an easy one on Tristan. Ah well, another of the 100 1km squares surveyed!