It's my last morning here, stumbling among tussac clumps worn smooth by fur seals, which the beaches are thick with. At seemingly every turn they lurk among the tussac slopes, with a growl, a yelp and stench.
Found 15 giant petrel nests. Another few records to add to our ever growing database of giant petrel nests in South Georgia. The survey team will be here for another three weeks, heading for the south east end of South Georgia and filling in any gaps we've missed due to bad weather and our travel timetable.
Working in the field work, day after day, week after week, is a strange life. A world of Zodiac landings, painstaking ground-combing and data entry.
It's quite tough, sometimes tedious, sometimes against bad weather. And then sometimes you're required to walk a few miles in landscapes raw and magnificent under a clear sun and blue sky, searching for birds with the calm roar of the natural world of our planet pulling ever stronger. Many of the seemingly important things of my normal life have slipped away, lost in the focus of what we're doing and where we are.
Living aboard the 20 metre Golden Fleece for a month. The sea dominates. Constant motion, in constant change, the sea and the weather constantly define what we can and cannot do, where we can and cannot go. Living in close quarters, our team is life-enriching mix of biologists, sailors, adventurers and enthusiasts. We use three languages, share a mix of cultures and ideas, have learned much about each other and our interests.
But South Georgia has been our focus. It is an incredibly wild, rugged place, seemingly a true wilderness. But conserving South Georgia is not so simple as that may imply. There are areas that really are pristine planet. Others have been grazed by introduced reindeer, infested by rats and mice. There are places deep with the history and impacts of whaling industry; the sealers too have left their mark.
Today, the tourist ships bring visitors, raising both revenue and interest in the island. And of course it's the vital nesting place for many thousands, for hundreds of thousands and even millions of sea birds, as well as some rare land birds like the South Georgia pintails and pipits.
There clearly is a good understanding of the importance of looking after this amazing and far flung overseas territory of the United Kingdom. Our discovery of rats along the colonies of burrow nesting petrels and prions at Saddle Island has already met with an encouraging initial concern from the authorities, who have immediately recognised its high priority.
Effective resourcing for conservation however is particularly difficult in a remote island without permanent inhabitants. And clear, perhaps bold decisions need to be made and shared by a variety of experts and interests to develop appropriate nature conservation plans alongside the other interests of the island.
I'm one of the lucky few to have seen albatrosses and petrels soaring the waves, remote at sea and giant at hand on their nests. These massive, impressive birds are among the Earth's most amazing wildlife: something we surely have no option but to safeguard and treasure, on land and at sea.
And if I never see another fur seal in my life, I won't be disappointed.
My thanks to Sally Poncet and South Georgia Surveys for inviting me to join the 2006/7 ACAP South Georgia Petrel Survey; to skipper Dion Poncet and the crew of Golden Fleece for safe passage and exceptional efforts in looking after us; and to the other members of the survey team for their friendship and inspiration.
You cannot visit South Georgia without feeling something about Ernest Shackleton. A true British - well, Anglo-Irish, in fact - hero in that he snatched a kind of victory from the jaws of desperation and defeat.
He set out to make the first crossing of Antarctica, a fact lost in the epic struggle of getting his entire team back to safety after losing his ship in the ice of the Weddell Sea.
Shackleton reached South Georgia 90 years ago after crossing 800 miles of the Southern Ocean with five others in a 22 foot boat. It was an astounding feat of endurance, navigation and good luck. They made landfall in King Haakon Bay in the west of the south coast, first at Cape Rosa and then further down the Bay at Peggoty Bluff.
From here, Shackleton and two companions set off on a 36-hour, non-stop traverse of South Georgia's mountains to get to the whaling station at Stromness on the north coast, to get help and a ship to rescue his stranded men.
Luckily our petrel work has taken us down King Haakon Bay. Shackleton's first landing at Cape Rosa was in Cave Cove, reached through a narrow channel of steep cliffs for 50 metres or so: protection from the pounding sea. A small pebble beach to haul the James Caird out - six exhausted men pulling her up, with one ton of ballast stones inside her?
A cave for shelter and protection, fresh water in small lakes above the tussac slope. Strange the power that history gives a place, I thought, as I photographed the stones washed by the sea's edge in an evocation of landfall.
Further down the Bay, Peggoty Bluff is a windswept place at the foot of two glaciers and a vast open sweep of moraine. The small bluff has a cave in which the three stay-behinds must have sheltered from weather coming in from the sea - but giving little comfort to icy winds from off the glaciers.
The Shackleton Gap leads across to the north of the island, the first glacier crossing of several before the safety of Stromness. And the rock of the mountains rising between the glaciers is horribly loose and dangerous, as I found out with a brief excursion up Mount Duse near Grytiken.
The names of Shackleton and his companions are etched and remembered forever on South Georgia's map. His grave at Grytviken still attracts tributes and mementoes. But it seems sad that carpenter McNeish, who modified the James Caird to make her seaworthy for the epic crossing, gets only a tiny islet on the wrong side of King Haakon Bay from one of the most memorable landfalls of human endurance, which his handiwork helped make possible.
And who could have imagined, when I first read the story some 40 years ago in a cosy English childhood that one day I too would stand in these bleak, wild and historic places on the other side of the Earth and feel the pull that has inspired so many with South Georgia's chill wind tugging at my face?
We've now had a week on the south coast and there's a different feeling to the island - and to our endeavours.
We're more exposed to harsher weather and there are fewer sheltered anchorages, so we're having to be more adaptable in our plans. We've made some good landings and covered a lot of ground but we've also missed out on some good spots for giant petrels because the sea has been too rough to get ashore.
From Annenkov Island we enjoyed the most amazing views of South Georgia's south side: an endless vista of snow covered rocky mountain peaks, from the west right down to the east, horizon-spanning, brilliant under the sub-Antarctic sun, with the cloud in constant change, from wisps skimpily wreathing the highest tops to thick blankets pulled right down to the sea.
Annenkov is really special: a large island free from rats, with giant petrels and wandering albatrosses, pipits and pintails. We spent the day doing transect work for white-chinned petrels, monitoring nest burrows, vegetation and topography at 20 pace intervals in dead straight lines from coast to coast to help develop a method to assess the overall population from sample surveys.
After work, we lay on the tussac cliffs watching light-mantled sooty albatrosses lift and swoop on the evening breeze, against the backdrop of South Georgia's mountain chain.
We pondered the future of places like Annenkov. Is there really any need for people to visit here? Is scientific work justified against the danger of introducing rats or other damage to this fragile place?
Or is Annenkov Island one of those rare places, effectively as yet untouched by humans, that should remain so and placed out of bounds to scientists, explorers and other visitors alike, a piece of pristine planet left alone to continue thus?
The land of the south coast feels different to South Georgia's northern side. It isn't as indented by bays and inlets and there's a bit more land between the mountains and the sea.
Back on the trail of giant petrels, I enjoyed a walk among low hills and gentle rocky slopes with lakes in the hollows, dramatically echoing with the thunder and roar of a calving glacier just across the narrow bay beyond my headland. Last night's anchorage at Wilson Harbour featured a vast, scooped, glacial river valley pushing back into the mountains. And people have never tried to settle here.
There's the occasional evidence of a sealer's hut but it really seems like the south side is nature utterly raw, just as has been for epochs of time, unsullied by the advent of man. Let it continue to be so.
After the trip to Namibia in October where we learnt from interviewing skippers that seabird bycatch may be a problem, we decided to head back and continue what we had started. Now it was time to go to sea and see what really happens there.
I spent four weeks in the town of Luderitz in southern Namibia, and was welcomed by the only local longline company, Marco Fishing. They agreed to take me onboard their vessels and collect data at sea.
I was joined by Neville Uhongora, a Technical Assistant, who works on Ichaboe Island, monitoring the seabird colonies. We spent half of the first trip together before I was transferred to another vessel where I spent a couple more days.
Coming back from the first two trips found us carrying three bags with total of 63 dead birds - all white-chinned petrels.
One Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross and one Cape gannet were caught on the line and released alive and four birds (one sooty shearwater, one shy and two Atlantic yellow-nosed albatrosses) were observed with fishing lines poking out of their mouths. It was shocking!
After these trips, we went out on another two vessels for a week each. This time we came back with no dead birds, which was excellent. Interesting to note that the first trips were during the full moon - clearly an important factor in bird mortality.
Another interesting fact is that the total bird catch rate for these trips was exactly the same as the one we got from the skippers during the interviews. They do know what they are talking about. At the end of the trips, we delivered tori lines and the skippers promised to use them.
We still need to collect more data from Namibia to come up with an accurate assessment of the problem. I have met a lot of good people in Luderitz who helped me greatly during my stay there and I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart. I hope that together we will be able to conduct more trips, reach more fishermen and reduce the seabird bycatch in Namibia.
After coming back I joined the Sarah Bartman, a South African fisheries petrol vessel, on her last leg of its 21-day trip to Mozambique. We steamed from Durban, on the east coast, to Cape Town and on the way met a few trawlers and longliners.
The usual procedure includes boarding the boats to inspect them but due to the weather we could only talk to them on the radio. I also trained the two inspectors onboard, teaching them how to recognise tori lines and other mitigation measures which are part of the permit conditions and must be used during fishing practises.
Enforcing the existing laws is important in making sure these mitigation measures are been implemented and help albatrosses and petrels stay off the hook.
I want to thank Francois Louw from Marco Fishing, the skippers and crews of the Shearwater Bay, Spencer Bay, Elenga Bay and Tangeni Bay for top-class hospitality and for listening, teaching and being willing to help us help the birds.
Also the staff of the Ministry of Fishery and Marine Resources in Luderitz, especially Cathy Peard, Jean-Paul Roux, Reinhold and Neville Uhongora. Also deepest thanks to Keith Govender and the crew of the Sarah Bartman for a five-star cruse.
We are 'forced' to take a leave for the rest of the month so all of you have happy holidays and a happy new year.
Today started grey and early, shimmering gloom but the forecast was good. Patches of clearing, glimpsed and snatched away again, but leaving a little more behind at each clearing.
The Zodiac scrunched against the rock of Saddle Island; a strong swell but we scrabbled ashore on wet, slithery rocks. Climbed the steep tussac to the plateau and then we split off to the four winds of the island, high above the surging sea.
The sun breaks through: two wandering albatrosses gaze back, massively white, sitting patiently with oversize beaks. Giant petrels everywhere, squashed on young chicks, yelling protection. The ground is riddled with the holes of burrow-nesting petrels - white-chins, diving petrels, prions.
White-chinned petrels swoop, circling to their nests as the sun builds. The occasional clipped crack of icebergs breaking and the low roar of a big glacier calving pierces the brilliant stillness.
The seascape clears, straggling wisps of cloud linger against the brilliant blue of the sea studded with small bergs, the wet green of the tussac, the shiny majesty of a thousand rocky peaks, un-named, unclimbed, untouched. The rocky scree of our island for the day climbs steeply to end abruptly in a 600 foot plunge to the sea.
Our paradise of the perfect morning is broken by the finding of rat droppings. Then a skull; I hear rodent scurrying among the high tussac. Brought to South Georgia by people, rats are a serious pest here: they eat the burrow-nesting birds. And already, they have cleared out the pipits.
Our morning's idyll has found the beginnings of a nightmare. Our brief visit has made Saddle Island a top conservation priority: without a rat eradication programme the burrows will fall silent in ten, maybe 20 years. Thank goodness we've found this now, while there is still time to act.