ZECO TRAVEL TALK

In a Seattle Times story—August 17, 2007—writer Craig Welch reported a fascinating sequence of events that spans 7,000 miles and two hemisphere, a sooty shearwater chick, a fish, and an electronic monitoring device… and the research scientist who was the catalyst for the story. We thought you’d enjoy a brief recap of a mystery with an amazing answer:

When Dale Whaitiri, a bird researcher, pulled a tiny monitoring tag from a dead baby sooty shearwater on an island off Southern New Zealand, he wanted to know where it came from and how it got there. That bird was about to be the dinner of local Maori tribesmen who “catch the delicious chicks for supper, but hand over the stomachs to Whaitiri and other researchers who monitor the birds’ diets.”

Some scientific sleuthing revealed that the tag was three years old and originated in a steelhead that was being monitored after it was released into Columbia River. Since steelhead migrate north, it was determined that a sooty shearwater must have been the carrier. These hardy seabirds fly thousands of miles to nest in warm weather and they are often seen in great numbers at the mouth of the Columbia feeding on steelhead as they make their way into the Pacific. The birds favor nesting spots in Japan and New Zealand and lay eggs in underground burrows.

Welsh reports that Jen Zamon, a seabird expert for the Northwest Fisheries Science Center feels the answer to the mystery then “…may be elementary. A sooty shearwater ate the steelhead on the Columbia, carried the indigestible glass tag in its belly for two years, then regurgitated it into the baby’s eager maw.”

The greater mystery, according to Welsh, ends up being: “How did the tag wind up in a fat, flightless bird about to be eaten by Maori tribesmen? And of the millions of …sooty shearwaters—called “titi” by the Maoris—how did Whaitiri manage to poke this one’s belly?”

“The odds are almost impossible to fathom,” said Zamon.

To read the story in its entirety: seattletimes.com

It is now official, a recently published paper in the journal Polar Biology, confirms what many of us have long suspected, there is more than one species of Rockhopper penguin out there!

For many years debates have raged with many an ornithologist having his feathers ruffled on the topic to split or not to split. The recent paper, by Banks et al. compared the genetic distances between the three Rockhopper subspecies and compared them with such sister species as Macaroni penguins. The results left Banks and his colleagues in no doubt, the three putative Rockhopper subspecies, currently living far apart in different areas of the Southern oceans, should be split into the following three species;

Rockhopper Penguin, Eudyptes chrysocome

Northern Rockhopper, Eudyptes moseleyi

Eastern Rockhopper, Eudyptes filhoi

This change in penguin taxonomy will now increase the number of penguin species from 17 to 19. For all of you that have traveled to Antarctica you will have seen Rockhopper Penguin as this is the species that is now restricted, as a breeding species, to islands off South America and the Falkland Islands. For those of you lucky enough to have traveled with Zegrahm on our historical Steppingstones of the Atlantic voyage, several years ago, you will now be able to check off Northern Rockhopper Penguin, as this was the species that we all saw so wonderfully well on Inaccessible Island. This species is now restricted to the islands of Tristan da Cunha, Gough Island, and St. Paul and Amsterdam Islands in the Indian Ocean. Finally we have the Eastern Rockhopper Penguin which is restricted as a breeding species to Crozet, Kerguelan, Heard, Macquarie, Auckland, Campbell, Bounty, Antipodes, Marion, and Prince Edward Islands. Read more

Our North Cape excursion ended the day with a great zodiac cruise around the seabird cliffs. The contrast between Norway and Russia is unbelievable and amazing to witness. Someone commented that it’s like going from a black and white movie to a color movie… from bleak Soviet-style apartment blocks to charming little houses with lace curtains, neatly manicured lawns, and lots of flowers.

The leaders and many passengers are still in heaven after seeing the nuclear powered icebreakers in port in Murmansk; we even saw the famous nuclear battleship named Peter the Great. Olga Stone plays the piano like I have never heard before and got continuous standing ovations throughout the two trips. All in all, the contrasts between Svalbard, Russia, and Norway - the amazing ceremonies and beautiful landscapes have made these trips truly special. The highlight today was the Sami reindeer herder standing in front of his tent telling us reindeer stories… When his cell phone went off and he had to get it out from under his reindeer skin tunic, everyone cracked up!

As part of the New England Aquarium Lecture series, Jack Grove, Zegrahm Cofounder and marine expert, will present Galapagos: A Laboratory for Global Marine Conservation on October 9, 2007 at the Harborside Learning Lab of the New England Aquarium in Boston. Marine ecosystems around the globe are currently threatened by an array of forces. Jack has spent 25 years visiting, studying, and photographing some of the world’s most breathtaking seascapes. Using a number of these ecosystems as background, he will share the unusual beauty and conservation challenges of the Galapagos and discuss the conservation and management programs in effect there, which may provide answers for other fragile island ecosystems. For more information about the lecture, go to www.neaq.org/lowellprograms.

Solovetskiy Islands, White Sea to Norway

Today at Solovetskiy was totally unexpected —and so amazing that it’s hard to describe, but I am going to try. We ran a continuous zodiac shuttle for the passengers back and forth from the ship to the island where a ceremony was being held at the monastery to bless new bells that had been made and shipped over to the island.

The Archbishop of Russia, the second highest authority in the Russian Orthodox church flew out from Moscow for the blessing and to perform the ceremony in the Russian Transfiguration Church in the monastery’s Kremlin. Pilgrims from all over the country came to celebrate and pray, from old women in colorful babushkas (scarves) and skirts, to young people… all arriving en masse to take part in the ceremony. We were the only outside witnesses to this special event, and had to wait most of the morning, but it was really worth it. The pomp and ceremony was spectacular, with all the monks and priests carrying crosses and icons, dressed in long robes with huge hats, parading out of the church as they made their way to the bells. The Archbishop then got up on the bell platform and started flinging water around with large brush, blessing the bells with his holy water. Most of us got blessed as well! When we came back to the ship, everyone was so excited and some of the passengers even said that if they had to turn around and go home now, it was worth coming!

We ended the day with Olga Stone playing a Russian piece of music that was inspired by the ringing of church bells and Sergey did a toast with vodka with all our passengers. What a day… and we have pictures to prove it!

Is it a loon or a diver? The United States and Britain had different names for the same bird which a new book, 16 years in the making, now standardizes. Until recently it all depended on which side of the pond you were from. A birder from Britain on our current Spitzbergen and White Sea trips would call the duck-like bird paddling around in front of him a Red-throated Diver. To the birder from New York standing at his side however, the same bird would be a Red-throated Loon.

The correct English name for any of the world’s currently recognized species has been the topic of heated debates for many years and has caused much confusion for the entry-level birder. All that has recently changed however with the publication of BIRDS OF THE WORLD, a 272 page compendium that now gives the correct English name to every bird species in existence–10,068, give or take a few, depending on your taxonomic bias. In the case of diver versus loon alas, the English lost out. There are no divers anymore, they are now currently referred to as loons. The Brits also lost out on those Common and Brunnich’s Guillemots some of our travelers were looking at on a recent Fire and Ice Expeditions in Russia. They are now known by their American names Common and Thick-billed Murre. But the American birders also had to make some concessions. Gone for instance is your American Dovekie, it is now known by its British name the Little Auk. Also, your Common Gallinule, as you Americans call the plump, chicken-like swampland bird, is now the Moorhen, a name that we Brits held onto tenaciously. Read more

Wahlenbergfjorden, Spitsbergen to the White Sea

We had a great day again today… Went to a fjord called Wahlenbergfjorden and then up a side arm called Palanderbukta. We did a great walk on a glacier this morning, and in the afternoon we visited some absolutely amazing bird cliffs, Alkejfillet, where there were thousands and thousands of birds. The rock cliffs themselves were spectacular; we saw small chicks dive-bombing into the sea with their dads, then having to learn to swim… all in a couple of minutes. We saw gulls eating chicks… big drama, fast action, and everything you could imagine in this bird colony. In the evening we made a landing to view a large number of walrus and 71 passengers got out there to quietly watch and photograph the walrus. They got really close and had a great look at them.

Liefdefjorden, Spitsbergen to the White Sea

A change of plan turned out to be just what we needed today and we had a fantastic time up in Liefdefjorden where we started the morning with a polar bear sighting… it was eating a seal! We spent some time with him and when he went into the water we continued up the fjord where we found another bear rolling around on a piece of ice. Last night we stopped at Moffen Island after dinner and had a great experience from the ship with a number of walrus.