At sea today, but I remember yesterday too.
A day at sea today. We are making our way to the Falkland Islands from South Georgia Island – an easy sea and we’re making good speed. A day at sea, well, why not highlight the marine environment? Excellent idea! Our last stop at South Georgia, yesterday, near about noon, was Blue Whale Harbour. We glided through clear water, liquid sapphire and brushed the edges of kelp forest, patches and patches, some here and some more just a bit over there and oh, sure, there too at the point and beyond. Yes, looks like good diving! I always feel most at home in the kelp forest. Indeed it’s dominated by the same species here as at my home in Pacific Grove, California, the giant kelp. We call them the redwoods of the sea. They can grow to over 100 feet tall and as a diver, you can fly among them, banking and soaring! I dove in about 65 feet of water here, in a sea that was a bit warmer today than yesterday, a bracing 32ºF! At the surface there were fur seals, mostly juveniles, just lazing about in a gentle swell, slowly rolling every once and again, taking a break from the more frantic scene on shore: fighting and mating, birthing and suckling. Under the water it was much quieter still. There were thousands of things, yet none with proper eyes and everything was slow, feeling their way towards further life or final death. The kelp adds complexity, a three dimensionality for things that don’t swim. Really, the kelp is more like a giant kapok tree on the rivers Amazon than a redwood in coastal California. Its ‘branches’ are full of life: hitchhikers, pirates and freeloaders. In the picture there are two prominent limpets grazing microscopic algae that have settled on the kelp. Almost hidden, in the left foreground is a sea star, looking for its next meal. Will it be a limpet? I don’t think so; there’s smaller, easier, tastier game afoot. On the right side of the picture you can see some peculiar clams, the kelp bivalve, a favorite food of sea birds when they can get them. These kelp bivalves are 30 feet below the surface of the sea, safe from most birds, but not from the sea stars. This sea star follows odor gradients and depends on dumb luck to find the right roadway to its prey. If it touches the limpet, the limpet will immediately drop off of the kelp and fall to the bottom, upside down, bouncing on its hard shell, but not so the kelp bivalve, they’re attached to the kelp, filter feeders, not active grazers, they can only hide in time and space. Time, because they grow and then die quickly; space because they are patchy (isn’t everything good in life?): rich pastures separated by vast deserts. It’s all there in the picture. And, no, it has not been touched up. The sea was that blue and everything else was golden. All of this just a snapshot as I slowly drift upwards through the kelp, eager to see the next scene and the next after that from the greatest show on earth – Nature. What else?
