Day 14 – Starlink drops, counts and loggers

The mist is back with northeasterly conditions.

We are having problems getting the solar power to work. For the time being we rely on the generator to power our many devices which means our 60 l of petrol may not last the entire four weeks we are here. There is a stash of another 60 l, so we should be fine, but still annoying that the solar does not seem to do anything. Could be that the battery banks are too old. Or maybe there is a gremlin in the system we haven’t worked out yet. Or maybe it’s the constant fog?

With the weather not being very conducive of expeditions away from the hut, we busy ourselves with data analysis, primarily bird counts on orthomosaics from the Bounties. Processing the data is hampered by upload issues. The raw photo data is uploaded to the Drone Deploy servers and processed online. However, the upload often cuts out due to Starlink drops, and for some reason upload resumes don’t seem to work. Another problem that needs solving over the next few days.

Robin heads over to the Reef Point colony to do a ground count of active nests – she finds 374 nests. A subsequent drone survey of the colony flown by Hannah shortly after Robin’s return finds 886 individuals on the ground. Dave and Bianca head over to the Anchorage Bay colony around the corner (i.e. not the bit below the ladder) to count nests and ended up with an average 316 nests.

In the late afternoon, the first three GPS dive loggers are deployed on female penguin attending their chicks on the rock platform next to the ladder in Anchorage Bay. The wind picks up towards the evening and it start raining in the night.