First day on the mission. A team of four – Jeff, Robin, Thomas & Hannah – head toward South Bay to establish camp there before returning in the evening. Klemens and Bianca leave shortly thereafter to survey the cliffs between Stella and Anchorage Bay for Light-mantled Sooty Albatross nests. Dave will map the penguin colony in Anchorage Bay and determine progress of the breeding season, before laying out a network of tracking tunnels to monitor potential mouse incursion after the successful eradication in 2014.

But first… complete our daily sched with the mainland that we are all okay. While this used to be done via VHF radios or more recently satellite phones, Starlink offers a new convenient method – Whatsapp.

The South Bay team leave around 10am and after 30 minutes of reasonable progress run into the infamous Antipodes Islands tussock country that makes walking a nightmare. The tussock is growing so tall that it gives the walker two options – to balance on top of the tussock to try to take one wobbly step after the other to get from tussock to tussock or walk between the tussock plants that are often chest high. Both options make for very slow progress and drain the energy out of the party quick. Thick fog and unfamiliarity with the island make it difficult for the team to find the most suitable route towards the South.

By midday, they hear a penguin cacophony somewhere in the fog which means that the Orde Lees colony in the west of the island is not too far off. Not at all the direction they had planned to go, but nevertheless enticing enough to push towards the penguin noise. Just after midday, the team find themselves on the top of a cliff overlooking the penguin colony in the distance. The colony looks impressive and takes up a rock platform at the base of a steep cliff.

The majority of nests are Erect-crested penguins with a group of Rockhopper penguins lined up at the base of a rock overhang some way up the cliff. Overall a rough estimate of 2000 pairs is made. Thomas and Hannah decide to fly a manual drone mission, but the extent, shape and topography of the colony make it difficult for the pilot to get bearings. It is, however, clear that the drone missions must be rethought as the terrain poses significant problems for the standard way drone missions are flown. Just before 1pm the team continues their trek to the South.

Progress is slowed not only by tussock areas but also increasingly fern patches that are just as difficult to traverse. By 2pm, the team realizes that the involuntary detour to Orde Lees cost them the couple of hours it would need to get to the South today. They decide to reach the central plateau and stash the camping gear about two thirds of the way to the South before making their way back to the hut. As the afternoon progresses, the difficult walking conditions slowly but surely drain the energy out of the team. They develop a general rule of thumb by which albatross nests dotted around in the vegetation are a good indicator for reasonably walk-able terrain, while the absence of open seabird burrows is a sure indicator for terrible conditions.

Each an every step they take is followed by Reischek’s and Antipodean parakeets, the latter potentially eyeing up one or two of the tired team member for later consumption, should they succumb to the hardship of the trail.

Close to the top of Mt Galloway, the team comes across what looks like a Giant Petrel crèche where several petrel chicks have bunched up in the tussock with three or four adults standing guard.

During a much needed water break, the team is approached by an adult Antipodean albatross which after several attempts takes flight into the clearing mist. The last two hours back to the hut remain an incredible slog. The southern party returns to the hut exhausted and smelly by 7pm.

Klemens and Bianca also have an eventful day. Scrambling along the top of the cliffs between Stella Bay, Reef Point and Anchorage Bay turns out just as arduous as what the southern team experiences. Over the course of three hours, the two find a total of 3 light-mantled sooty albatross nests.

Meanwhile, Dave mapped the part of the Anchorage Bay Erect-crested penguin colony closest to the hut. About two thirds of the nests are still on eggs, the other nests have generally very small chicks that have just hatched. So it will be another three or four days before we can start deploying GPS dive loggers on chick rearing female penguins. The Rockhopper penguins are about two weeks behind. In the afternoon, Dave ran several tracking tunnel lines radiating out from the hut. Hopefully these tunnels will not pick up any mustelid activity.

In the evening the whole team discusses how to proceed from here. While the work on the Bounty Islands was straight forward and could be completed as planned, we will have to improvise quite a bit more on the Antipodes. For one, access to the south of the island is far more difficult that anticipated. That will have an effect on what we can do down there. We definitely want tracking data form down there. But at the same time, we want to reduce the number of trips we need to do across the island to n absolute minimum. Blood sampling will also have to be done with no frills – carrying centrifuges across the island is a less then appealing prospect. Drone missions will have to be toned down to the essential sites first before we can even start to think about covering additional sites around the island. How accessible these sites will be is another question.