Noisy neighbours

 

While we were away some noisy neighbours had moved in!

 

Busy busy busy....

Since our arrival in Lyttelton, we have both been quite busy. Jim was straight in to work with a conference in his first week not to mention 2 ship fires, abandoned cruise ship passengers and so far more oil spills (real and imagined) than in all his time in Auckland. I started looking for work (although not too hard) and spent a great week in Wellington catching up with friends. On my return, I was asked to help sail a friend's yacht back from Fiji. Spent 3 weeks away, longer than expected as due to weather and other factors we called in to Opua and then had to wait for decent-ish weather to go down the west coast to Picton. I was home for not quite a week and then off for 2 trips to the sub-antarctic on Evohe, an expedition boat that I have crewed on before.

The two trips were quite a contrast. The first trip was a yellow-eyed penguin survey in the Auckland Islands, visiting quite a few locations with DoC workers and volunteers. Everyone was fascinated with the wildlife and/or history of the islands. Penguin counting took place between 5 and 9 am, leaving the afternoons for exploring or relaxing. After a delay due to weather, the second trip saw us anchored up in Preservation Harbour in Campbell Island for the duration. On board we had a group of amateur radio enthusiasts who spent most of the time in a darkened room making contacts around the world. First they had to set up about 10 aerials 'helped' by the odd sealion! Those of us on Evohe had an excellent time, getting out and enjoying the fantastic scenery and flora and fauna - megaherbs, NZ sea lions, royal albatross, light-mantled sooty albatross, giant petrel chicks...It was interesting to see everything at a different time of year compared to when we were here in February. In the meantime, Jim got jealous of me being down south and accepted an offer (desperate plea for help) to skipper another boat on a 2 week trip in the sub-antarctic...it's not often you bump into your partner in Campbell Island!

Yellow-eyed penguins on Enderby. Two crew members including myself, joined the penguin counters here for a morning, so that as much of Enderby as possible could be covered.

 

 Hey, you're supposed to stay 5 meters away! A young NZ sea lion hasn't read the DoC rules. Nor had the somewhat larger male who was very interested in me and my clip board earlier in the morning.

Colourful bulbonella was in flower at both islands

Sea lion coming ashore with bulbonella and anisotome megaherbs in the foreground