At Sea
A good crossing from South Georgia to the Falklands with a little wind in our faces and some occasional pitching as we bump across the bones of old storms. The Endeavour canters through a sea of many grays under a sky of many lighter grays torn here and there to reveal a distant, flawless sheet of blue. Not a warm color this blue, rather a kind of cold baby blue, frozen and infinite, like dense glacial ice. We continue our journey through the Southern Ocean. We are near her edge surrounded by her birds. Sometimes near, sometimes far, some are gigantic, some are wandering albatross, stately and noble, but up close almost ugly with their exaggerated features. No, not ugly. No, at first sight they just seem so different, so alien, so free, so fearless. Yes, it is their wildness that appears so strange, so fascinating. Not the wildness of an undisciplined child, no, it is the wildness of wilderness, they are nobility, leading citizens from a distant place, a place without people, a place of little land surrounded by a vast sea of wind, waves and foam, a wild place. They sweep about us, back and forth, across the waves, across our bow, but always faster than us and eventually they turn back, completing a circle and begin again. Our hundreds of miles is their stroll in the park. Our entire voyage, both our time and our distance, is but a single fishing foray for them. Then again not everything important in the Southern Ocean is big, nor majestic. It is not all whales, albatross, penguins and tabular icebergs the size of Denmark. There are small birds, prions for example, which are worthy of honor and respect. Of prions there are several species, all are mostly a soft blue and with their specially augmented bills they sieve tiny crustaceans from the surface of the sea, copepods. Copepods? What are copepods? Well, surely you have heard of krill! Everything eats krill and krill are one of the things that eat copepods, so guess which is more numerous, more important. Copepods are related to shrimp, as well as krill for that matter; there are over 8000 species and the ones that we are interested in are mostly transparent with an elongated, tear-shaped body with two antennae at the broad end of equal length with that of the body, all in all about the size of speck of dust and they occur in their billions. They are the primary consumers of the algal bloom, the phytoplankton, the meadows of the sea and they are the oceans cattle, the steak of the krill. They, the copepods, are food for everything. Pictured here is an arrow worm in a kelp forest at South Georgia, a voracious predator that consumes over 40% of its body weight daily, that is like me eating 70 pounds of food each day. This arrow worm is nearly transparent and almost two and a half inches long, a giant of its kind! Around its toothy jaws are a number of recurved spikes upon which it impales its prey. Through the wounds it injects a powerful venom, tetrodotoxin of fugu fame, immediately paralyzing an animal even of its own size or larger. Its favorite prey, the copepod, is above it and to the right, a mere smear. O.K., maybe it’s not a killer whale stalking a seal, but it’s mighty impressive if you are a copepod and it resonates throughout the food chain.
A good crossing from South Georgia to the Falklands with a little wind in our faces and some occasional pitching as we bump across the bones of old storms. The Endeavour canters through a sea of many grays under a sky of many lighter grays torn here and there to reveal a distant, flawless sheet of blue. Not a warm color this blue, rather a kind of cold baby blue, frozen and infinite, like dense glacial ice. We continue our journey through the Southern Ocean. We are near her edge surrounded by her birds. Sometimes near, sometimes far, some are gigantic, some are wandering albatross, stately and noble, but up close almost ugly with their exaggerated features. No, not ugly. No, at first sight they just seem so different, so alien, so free, so fearless. Yes, it is their wildness that appears so strange, so fascinating. Not the wildness of an undisciplined child, no, it is the wildness of wilderness, they are nobility, leading citizens from a distant place, a place without people, a place of little land surrounded by a vast sea of wind, waves and foam, a wild place. They sweep about us, back and forth, across the waves, across our bow, but always faster than us and eventually they turn back, completing a circle and begin again. Our hundreds of miles is their stroll in the park. Our entire voyage, both our time and our distance, is but a single fishing foray for them. Then again not everything important in the Southern Ocean is big, nor majestic. It is not all whales, albatross, penguins and tabular icebergs the size of Denmark. There are small birds, prions for example, which are worthy of honor and respect. Of prions there are several species, all are mostly a soft blue and with their specially augmented bills they sieve tiny crustaceans from the surface of the sea, copepods. Copepods? What are copepods? Well, surely you have heard of krill! Everything eats krill and krill are one of the things that eat copepods, so guess which is more numerous, more important. Copepods are related to shrimp, as well as krill for that matter; there are over 8000 species and the ones that we are interested in are mostly transparent with an elongated, tear-shaped body with two antennae at the broad end of equal length with that of the body, all in all about the size of speck of dust and they occur in their billions. They are the primary consumers of the algal bloom, the phytoplankton, the meadows of the sea and they are the oceans cattle, the steak of the krill. They, the copepods, are food for everything. Pictured here is an arrow worm in a kelp forest at South Georgia, a voracious predator that consumes over 40% of its body weight daily, that is like me eating 70 pounds of food each day. This arrow worm is nearly transparent and almost two and a half inches long, a giant of its kind! Around its toothy jaws are a number of recurved spikes upon which it impales its prey. Through the wounds it injects a powerful venom, tetrodotoxin of fugu fame, immediately paralyzing an animal even of its own size or larger. Its favorite prey, the copepod, is above it and to the right, a mere smear. O.K., maybe it’s not a killer whale stalking a seal, but it’s mighty impressive if you are a copepod and it resonates throughout the food chain.
