When the French ship L’Astrolabe departs Hobart for Macquarie Island later today I won’t be aboard. The passenger capacity of the ship is only enough for essential logistical operations (like refuelling and provisioning the research station) and personnel changeover. The Read More …
The Aurora Australis recently arrived back in Australia and is currently in Fremantle for repairs to the hull which was damaged when the ship ran aground in Antarctica last month. Meanwhile, alternative plans for the season’s fourth and final Australian Read More …
In Antarctic slang it’s called the “A-factor”. Experienced expeditioners will tell you that things rarely go according to plan in the Antarctic and Subantarctic. It is wise to expect the unexpected and to have a string of contingency plans. If Read More …
In April 2015 the short grasslands of Macquarie Island are at the end of their summer growing season. The plants are the tallest they have been for years, probably for many decades. There is virtually no bare ground visible as Read More …
Rabbits were already locally abundant on Macquarie Island by the time the first descriptions of the island’s vegetation were made by Scott (1880) and A. Hamilton (1884). Consequently there is no information to give us a baseline of the vegetation Read More …
What is Macquarie Island’s rarest plant? One contender for the title is Subantarctic bedstraw or Antarctic bedstraw (Galium antarcticum), a small creeping herb with tiny delicate pinkish flowers. The species was first recorded in 1983, growing near Skua Lake around Read More …
Where did Macquarie Island’s plants come from? Being hundreds of kilometres from its nearest neighbours, all of the plants must have been transported to this tiny speck of land in the ocean since it rose from the seabed less than Read More …
If ever one needed an excuse to post pictures of penguins, yesterday was World Penguin Day. Four penguin species breed on Macquarie Island. King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) can reach a metre tall and can dive to deeper than 300 metres. Read More …
Walking is getting harder on Macquarie Island. Previously short-cropped grass only centimetres tall is now a knee-deep meadow of grass matted with mosses and herbs. This is one of the initial observations from last week’s field trip to the Subantarctic Read More …
Just arrived back at the station via helicopter. Unfortunately we lost about half of our planned fieldwork time: operations on the island are winding up early due to forecast bad weather, and earlier in the week we had two days Read More …