Journey To The End Of The Earth

After being thrown from my bed for the third time, I decided to get up and find a vantage point to better enjoy the storm. As I walked down the swaying corridor and up the stairs with the gait of a drunken sailor, I began to reconsider my decision to go outside. It was a doubt quickly stubbed as I jumped through the heavy metal door leading outside moments before it smashed closed behind me with a deep roll of the ship.

- Dr Tegan Carpenter-Kling

There, between the ominous storm clouds and furious white horses racing across the Southern Ocean, glided a gigantic male Wandering Albatross. Without a single wing beat, he dipped in and out of the waves, navigating the angry storm with an unstudied calmness until he effortlessly overtook the ship and disappeared into the distance. The short encounter was surreal – the beautiful and graceful creature seemed out of place in such a turbulent environment, but of course this is the natural habitat of the albatross and so many other seabirds.

On Christmas Day 2020, I set sail for Antarctica on the SA Agulhas II. I had been invited by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment to participate in the voyage as a seabird biologist from BirdLife South Africa. I had been tasked with assisting Makhudu Masotla, a seabird scientist from the department, with the annual at-sea seabird ship-based observations and Emperor Penguin and Snow Petrel colony counts. Having dedicated much of my adult life to seabird research, I cannot explain the excitement I felt at visiting seabird colonies in the most pristine yet extreme environment in the world. Although constantly stoking my passion to contribute to seabird conservation and science, the human impacts on our nation’s seabird breeding colonies are evident and concerning. The footprint left behind from human activities is vast and ranges from starving African Penguins washing up on our coastline to albatross chicks being nibbled to death by house mice on Marion Island. A trip to Antarctica promised not only adventure, but a chance to see seabirds in an environment largely untouched by mankind.