British Antarctic Survey is deeply saddened to report that former Director, Dr. Barry Heywood passed away unexpectedly but peacefully at home on Monday 25 January. He was 83.
Barry had a long and successful career at BAS. He joined the Falkland Island Dependencies Survey as a biologist in 1961, wintered at Signy from 1962-63, and from 1978-1986 was Chief Scientist for the Offshore Biological Programme working onboard the RRS John Biscoe.
As a senior leader, he held positions of Head of the Marine Life Sciences Division, Deputy Director (1988-94), and Director from 1994-97. His service was recognized with the awards of Polar Medal in 1967 and Clasp in 1986.
More recently he represented the BAS Club on committees such as the Fuchs Medal Committee and continued to be interested in BAS activities.
Our condolences go to his wife Jo and their daughters Lisa and Ellie.
Body me
By Diane Selkirk (BBC)
15 June 2020
Donkeys were introduced to Ascension Island in the early 19th Century and now roam wild (Credit: Diane Selkirk)
From the sea, volcanic Ascension Island looks as if it’s smouldering. Big mid-Atlantic swell rolling up from the Southern Ocean explodes onto the rugged cinder and sand shoreline, leaving sea spray hanging in the air like steam. Inland, it’s all black lava and red rubble, a forbidding landscape that once earned the island the tourist-repelling descriptor of “hell with the fire put out”.
The mist that collects around the island’s highest peak completes the smoky illusion. Rising above a cataclysmic backdrop of dormant craters, pyroclastic deposits and lava domes, 859m-high Green Mountain is a leafy oddity on the charred island: its flourishing cloud forest is testament to both the ingenuity of humans and the resilience of nature.
Planted on a desolate hilltop less than 160 years ago, the forest that began on a whim has started attracting the notice of scientists around the world. Upending traditional ideas of conservation, Green Mountain offers the hopeful idea that man-made ecosystems can improve our environment. As the climate crisis ravages landscapes and leads to catastrophic damage – such as the recent bush fires in Australia – the thriving jungle on Ascension bolsters the argument that maybe we can regenerate a forest using concepts from this remote and often forgotten place.
Ascension Island erupted from the Atlantic Ocean about a million years ago. Located midway between Angola and Brazil, the island got it’s name when it was rediscovered by Afonso de Albuquerque on Ascension Day 1503 (it was first spotted by João da Nova in 1501). For a long time it was only occupied by nesting seabirds and green turtles that make the 3,000-mile journey from Brazil to breed. Its first human inhabitants came in 1815, when the British Royal Navy set up camp to keep watch on Napoleon, who was imprisoned 700 nautical miles south-east on Saint Helena.
What you see on Green Mountain is something traditional researchers wouldn’t have looked twice at
The thriving jungle on Ascension suggests that we might be able to regenerate forests using introduced species (Credit: Diane Selkirk)
Ascension went on to become a useful stopping point for ships. But during his visit in 1836, Charles Darwin pointed out the island’s most obvious flaw: its treeless, “naked hideousness” made it a tough place to live. Inspired by his friend Darwin’s theories about turning the arid landscape into a garden, botanist Joseph Hooker came up with a plan: by planting seedlings from around the world, trees could catch the mist and increase rainfall over the scorched island, making it livable.
The plan was a success. In 1860, John Bell, the island’s horticulturalist, supervised the planting of some 27,000 trees and shrubs, which resulted in the development of enough soil to grow crops.
It was the opportunity to visit Darwin’s quirky and little-known forest, along with the mid-ocean promise of fresh raspberries and bananas, that drew my family to Ascension; an island that now has a population of around 900 people made up of American and British military and their civilian contractors.
Leaving our sailboat anchored in Clarence Bay, we drove our rental car out of Georgetown, along Nasa Road and through a blindingly bright lunarscape past the nightclub, the golf course, lava flows and volcanic craters and around the feral donkeys that were foraging in a desert of mesquite and prickly pear.
Eventually we started up Green Mountain. Here the harsh sunlight was softened by mist and then blotted out by patchy rain. Then the road took us into a casuarina and acacia forest that could have come straight out of Australia. From there we drove into a dense jungle of bananas, ginger, juniper, raspberries, coffee, ferns and figs.
After parking, we set off on a hike. Encountering the occasional feral sheep, we walked along a cool, misty trail. Overgrown with Cape yews and Norfolk pines, descendants of some of the seedlings Hooker advised the British Admiralty to transport to Ascension from botanical gardens around the world, the forest felt deceptively ancient.
According to traditional ecological principles, this hotchpotch of endemic grasses and ferns combined with more than 300 non-indigenous species should never have evolved into a thriving ecosystem. Complex forests are thought to take millions of years of careful self-selection to develop. But the man-made ecosystem on Green Mountain, where introduced species and island plants seem to have evolved together, doesn’t fit that paradigm. It’s neither garden, nor wilderness.
“What you see on Green Mountain is something traditional researchers wouldn’t have looked twice at,” Dave Wilkinson, ecology professor at the University of Lincoln, UK, told me over the phone, “Because it’s completely dominated by non-native species, it would have been of no interest.”
He added: “Ecologists have traditionally focused on the natural bits, not the things that aren’t supposed to be there. Those things were considered bad.”
Until recently, conservation meant getting rid of invasive species and allowing a landscape to return to the way it was before people got involved. On isolated and treeless Gough Island, 2,000 nautical miles further south, the English house mouse offers a classic example of what goes wrong when humans mess with the environment. In his book The New Wild, Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation, author Fred Pearce describes how house mice got to the island from passing ships and then, “over decades of windswept isolation”, the mice mutated and turned carnivorous. They now consume a ton of seabirds a day, threatening the local population.
A chance visit to Ascension Island in 2004 got Wilkinson thinking about this “natural versus invasive” perspective. “Most who see the forest say, ‘Well this is very odd’, and then go study the turtles or seabirds,” he said. But Wilkinson couldn’t move on. “Green Mountain is a very dramatic example of something quite common: in a lot of the world, non-native species are a functioning part of the ecosystem.”
It’s a tropical forest on a site that didn’t use to have a tropical forest
Wilkinson took the idea further in his controversial 2004 essay for the Journal of Biogeography, The Parable of Green Mountain, challenging the theory that introduced species don’t belong and putting forward the argument that man-made ecosystems, like Green Mountain, could play a critical role in our future.
Over the next few years this idea gained traction, and in 2006 the term “novel ecosystem” was developed by renowned ecologist Richard Hobbs to describe places like Green Mountain that were irreversibly changed by human intervention – and may not need to be fixed.
Anna Bäckström, senior ecologist at the ICON Science Research Group, RMIT University in Australia, says that proponents of a novel-ecosystem approach have a pragmatic view of conservation. “The concept offers more flexibility,” she explained. Given the realities of climate change, human impact and the small amount of funds usually available for conservation, she says that by accepting the changes humans have made, ecological restoration is more manageable. “The landscape doesn’t have to revert to what it was,” she said. “We just want diversity and balance.”
This idea, that the service an ecosystem provides – such as flood control, carbon sequestration or pollination – is more important than a forest’s pristine condition is becoming embraced more widely. As ecosystems are thrown into chaos through the fires, storms and disease brought on by the climate crisis, it’s becoming more about resilience than anything.
“If a group of plants survive, and some of them are non-indigenous, we don’t want to rip them out,” Bäckström said. “Diversity in the ecosystem is more important than a plant’s origin.”
Going even further, Wilkinson says that the novel-ecosystem approach allows ecologists to account for some of the forces that might shape the ecosystems of the future. “Twenty years ago conservation managers would never consider planting a non-native species, but now we know the value of having a mixture of trees on the site so if a tree pathogen, fire or storm comes through you don’t lose absolutely everything,” he said. With a novel-ecosystem approach, conservationists have the freedom to rebuild a now-dry flood plane with drought-resistant species or replant a fire-ravaged landscape with plants that thrive in a hotter region.
What this means is the experiment of Green Mountain, where plants were thrown together from different places and then somehow thrived, can perhaps be replicated. It tells us that controversial ideas – like China’s, to plant billions of trees to hold back the desert; or Australia’s push for people to plant non-indigenous fire retardant plants and trees – are worth looking at closely. Darwin and Hooker’s novel idea tells us when it comes to survival, sometimes it’s okay to experiment and create something new.
Green Mountain is a very dramatic example of something quite common
The thing that struck me the most when I stood on the misty summit of Green Mountain, looking over the arid lowlands out to the sea, was the awareness that in traditional ecology there should never have been a Green Mountain. Even Hooker came to regret the forest and the damage it did to Ascension’s native ecosystem, with the introduced plants eventually outcompeting the sparse growth that was there.
But luckily, there was never that much interest in digging up Green Mountain. And then time went on and longtime Ascension Island conservation officer Stedson Stroud discovered that the once thought-to-be-extinct Ascension Island parsley fern hadn’t actually been wiped out by the new plants, and that some of the island’s other native plants actually grew better because of the introduced species.
Wilkinson says that in the past five to 10 years, a shift in thinking meant conservationists began to see the accident of Green Mountain as something optimistic, “It’s a tropical forest on a site that didn’t use to have a tropical forest. We’re used to seeing the opposite; tropical forests are cleared and then they’re gone.”
Wilkinson says while you probably can’t build a Green Mountain after every fire, or whenever pests or pathogens destroy a forest, Darwin and Hooker did leave us a few clues for building a more resilient world. We live in a time of accelerating climate change, when disease moves more quickly than evolution. Just look at how Covid-19 sped around the world, he said. “Green Mountain shows that you can bring ecosystems back or potentially put them into places where they weren’t before on a timescale of less than a century.”
They won’t be as diverse as a tropical forest that’s been there for millennia. But they’ll exist.
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While the MFV Edinburgh was waiting off-shore for a break in the weather so that we could finish off-loading, we got a radio message from the vessel on Friday 17 July 2020 saying that a crew member had been taken ill. We immediately launched a RIB to collect him and bring him ashore to the hospital, where he was examined. The doctors here confirmed that he had suffered a serious myocardial infarction (i.e. a heart attack).
An emergency ambulance collects the medical evacuee from the MFV Edinburgh in Cape Town harbour.
Following consultations with cardiologists in Cape Town, the medical opinion was that he needed an operation, and that it would be better if he returned to Cape Town on the boat, rather than waiting another two months here on the island for the next boat. However he would need some medical attention on the voyage. So we brought ashore two members of the ship’s crew who had some medical training, and explained to them what treatment was required, before they all returned to the Edinburgh on 19 July. We also lent the boat one of our oxygen concentrators to assist him on the voyage, and gave him all the necessary medication.
The ship set off again on 19 July, arriving in Cape Town on 25 July. The crew of the vessel kept in daily contact with the doctors on Tristan and the cardiologists in Cape Town.
We are delighted that he made it back to Cape Town, and that he has been admitted to hospital. We wish him a speedy recovery.
Photos and report from Rachel Green
Identification by Peter Ryan
A young Kelp Gull was sighted on a beach west of Calshot Harbour on Monday 25th August. Kelp Gulls are one of the more common vagrant birds from South America that set out over the ocean and may be seen feeding around the Tristan da Cunha Islands on their huge journey eastwards.
Kelp Gulls breed widely in the Southern Hemisphere, around the coasts of South America, Southern Africa and Australasia as well as the South Atlantic Isands including the Falklands and South Georgia and the Southern Indian Ocean Prince Edward – Heard Island achipelago, but not on the Tristan da Cunha Islands.
The species is also referred to as the Southern Black-backed Gull and is identified by the common latin name Larus domininanus as it is also known as the Dominican Gull.
Juvenile Kelp Gulls, like the example seen at Tristan in August 2020, have very distinctive and attractive markings that contrast with the yellow bill, white head and black and white tail feathers of breeding adults.
The Kelp Gull will be featured in a forthcoming second issue of stamps from the Tristan Post Office on vagrant species.
Report and photos by Head Teacher Julia Hagan
Almost a year after the school was damaged by the storm of July 2019, the move back to the ‘Old School’, as St Mary’s School has become known, happened on Monday 6th July 2020.
Everything was moved back to St Mary’s on that day with the help of PWD staff. After that it took only a couple of days to get the school set up again.
The children were very excited to be back and helped to get their classes set up, which was done with minimal disruption to the school day. All at St Mary’s are very grateful to all who worked so hard to get it up and running again, and to the contributions made from the Tristan da Cunha Association’s Emergency Appeal fund.
Report from Administrator Fiona Townsend, 2nd September 2020
Departure from Cape Town
The delayed MFV Geo Searcher, which was originally scheduled to depart Cape Town on the 20th or 21st August, finally left on the 29th August 2020.
The MFV Geo Searcher pictured November 2019
There was a brief stopover at Walvis Bay, Namibia, on the 1st September to pick up engineers, and she is now heading for Tristan with an ETA of 8th September. This is a fishing trip, and is currently scheduled for 80 days. There are no passengers.
British Antarctic Survey News Team
Rothera Research Station is the UK Antarctic hub for frontier science. Over the next decade, Rothera Research Station will be upgraded to ensure its facilities keep the UK at the forefront of climate, biodiversity and ocean research. This comprehensive modernisation includes a new wharf for the RRS Sir David Attenborough and a new science and operations facility, the Discovery Building.
Rothera Research Station Modernisation is part of the long-term Antarctic Infrastructure Modernisation (AIM) Programme and will transform how British Antarctic Survey enables and supports polar science.
Commissioned by the Natural Environment Research Council (UKRI-NERC), the modernisation programme represents the largest Government investment in polar science infrastructure since the 1980s.
Rothera Wharf
The first phase of Rothera Research Station Modernisation was to rebuild and extend Rothera Wharf to accommodate the new and larger polar ship, the RRS Sir David Attenborough.
Construction on the new £40m Rothera Wharf began in November 2018 and was completed by April 2020. A specialist team built the 74 metre wharf over 18 months through during the Antarctic summers (November to May).
The 50-strong team from construction partners and designers of the wharf, BAM, with the support of Sweco and technical advisors, Ramboll, completed the project. Turner & Townsend also provided cost management.
Rothera Wharf Benefits
Accommodate and moor the new polar ship for Great Britain, the RRS Sir David Attenborough.
Bigger, deeper and stronger than the previous wharf.
Launching small boats with a larger crane.
A personnel gangway and a floating pontoon for the deployment of scientific instruments.
Rothera Wharf Final Season (2019-2020)
The season started in November 2019 with the team clearing 2000 tonnes of snow as the site was not operational during the dark Antarctic Winter. The wharf’s remaining 14 out of 20 steel frames that form the wharf’s skeleton were put in place and backfilled with rock, securing the structure.
The first ships, including the RRS James Clark Ross, moored at the new wharf in April 2020.
Rothera Wharf First Season (2018-2019)
During the first season, the old Biscoe wharf was taken apart in January 2019. Temporary cargo unloading and boat launch facilities were set-up. The first steel frames of the new wharf were lowered into place.
Extreme Construction
Building a new wharf in one of the world’s most remote locations presented a number of challenges. Every nut and bolt needed to be accounted for and the 4,500 tonnes of equipment was shipped 11,000 km from the UK to Antarctica.
The construction team practiced full-scale assembly of the 45 tonne steel frames in Southampton to identify unexpected challenges or additional pieces of equipment needed whilst still in the UK.
By J Brock (FINN)
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced the long awaited merger of Department for International Development and Foreign Office.
Named the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, (FCDO) it officially launched on Wednesday, 2 September.
“FCDO will unite development and diplomacy that brings together the best of Britain’s international effort into one government department. It will continue to demonstrate the UK’s role to act as a force for good in the world,” said the FCDO Press Office.
Though the UK is acknowledged as a world leader in international development, the Department also helps to overcome extreme poverty in developing countries by tackling medical challenges including coronavirus, saving lives in humanitarian crises and promoting education and sustainability.
Objectives of the new overseas department as well as a reset of the UK’s international priorities, will be shaped by the outcome of a major assessment underway across the UK Government, known as the Integrated Review. It is expected the Review will conclude before the end of 2020 and represents the biggest review of foreign, defence and development policy since the Cold War. The British Overseas Territories will remain an important component of the UK’s international interests.
Priorities for the new Department in St Helena include continuing to promote good governance, supporting essential public services, and delivering capital investment and encouraging economic opportunities through the continuing Economic Development Investment Programme (EDIP). It is the same for all the UK’s Overseas Territories.
Announcing the new department, the Prime Minister said:
This is exactly the moment when we must mobilise every one of our national assets, including our aid budget and expertise, to safeguard British interests and values overseas.
And the best possible instrument for doing that will be a new department charged with using all the tools of British influence to seize the opportunities ahead.
The Prime Minister has also announced that the UK’s Trade Commissioners will come under the authority of UK Ambassadors overseas, bringing more coherence to our international presence.
“The FCO and DFID had a long history of working together to deliver, amongst other things, important projects such as the Airport, technical cooperation support and environmental improvements for St Helena. I welcome the creation of FCDO as an opportunity to unify the UK Government’s efforts to increase St Helena’s capacity to build a sustainable and prosperous future for itself.” Said Dr Philip Rushbrook, Governor of St Helena.
You can continue to contact the Governor’s Office through existing email addresses and telephone numbers. FCDO members of the Governor’s Office will also be contactable through a new email address from 2 September: first.surname@fcdo.gov.uk
M 4.8 – South Sandwich Islands region
2020-08-31 23:16:12 (UTC)
58.630°S 24.880°W
10.0 km depth
Nearby Places
Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, Tristan da Cunha, 2545.6 km (1581.8 mi) NNEPopulation: 271
Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina2614 km (1624.2 mi) WPopulation: 58028
Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina2632.4 km (1635.7 mi) WPopulation: 52681
Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Argentina2838.9 km (1764 mi) WPopulation: 85700
Punta Arenas, Region of Magallanes, Chile2845.9 km (1768.3 mi) WPopulation: 117430
Distance and direction from epicenter to nearby place.
M 5.1 – South Sandwich Islands region
2020-09-02 00:21:12 (UTC)
56.094°S 27.634°W
115.0 km depth
Nearby Places
Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, Tristan da Cunha, 2390 km (1485.1 mi) NEPopulation: 271
Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina2512.4 km (1561.1 mi) WSWPopulation: 58028
Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina2516.6 km (1563.7 mi) WPopulation: 52681
Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Argentina2705 km (1680.8 mi) WPopulation: 85700
Puerto Deseado, Santa Cruz, Argentina2717.5 km (1688.6 mi) WPopulation: 10237
Distance and direction from epicenter to nearby place.
M 5.4 – South Shetland Islands
2020-09-01 10:56:20 (UTC)
62.437°S 58.264°W
10.0 km depth
Nearby Places
Tolhuin, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina1018.4 km (632.8 mi) NWPopulation: 3000
Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina1023.5 km (635.9 mi) NWPopulation: 58028
Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina1104.9 km (686.6 mi) NWPopulation: 52681
Punta Arenas, Region of Magallanes, Chile1267 km (787.3 mi) NWPopulation: 117430
Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Argentina1364.5 km (847.9 mi) NNWPopulation: 85700
Distance and direction from epicenter to nearby place.
M 5.1 – South Shetland Islands
2020-08-30 10:31:53 (UTC)
62.363°S 58.231°W
4.3 km depth
Nearby Places
Tolhuin, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina1012.7 km (629.3 mi) NWPopulation: 3000
Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina1018.2 km (632.7 mi) NWPopulation: 58028
Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina1099.2 km (683 mi) NWPopulation: 52681
Punta Arenas, Region of Magallanes, Chile1262.1 km (784.2 mi) NWPopulation: 117430
Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Argentina1358.7 km (844.3 mi) NWPopulation: 85700
Distance and direction from epicenter to nearby place.
M 4.9 – South Shetland Islands
2020-08-29 12:47:03 (UTC)
62.432°S 58.238°W
4.2 km depth
Nearby Places
Tolhuin, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina1018.8 km (633 mi) NWPopulation: 3000
Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina1023.9 km (636.2 mi) NWPopulation: 58028
Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina1105.3 km (686.8 mi) NWPopulation: 52681
Punta Arenas, Region of Magallanes, Chile1267.5 km (787.6 mi) NWPopulation: 117430
Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Argentina1364.9 km (848.1 mi) NNWPopulation: 85700
Distance and direction from epicenter to nearby place.