Onboard the RRS Sir David Attenborough

We have now been sailing for three days, heading almost due south.  I am probably about as far from land as I have ever been on a ship before. 

The day we set off and the next morning were beautifully calm. 

 

Since then the waves have been getting bigger, the winds stronger and the temperature colder, as we head further south.  This morning the air temperature is down to 4 degrees. 

The current location of the RRS Sir David Attenborough can be found on the ship tracker here:

https://www.cruisemapper.com/?imo=9798222

The ships webcam can be found here (although it’s not always a very clear image):

https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/images/webcams/rrs-sir-david-attenborough-webcam/ 

Lots more information about the ship and its facilities can be found on this nice page here (if you go far enough down the page there is even a virtual ship tour):

https://www.bas.ac.uk/polar-operations/sites-and-facilities/facility/rrs-sir-david-attenborough/

Here are a few pictures of the inside of the ship.  This is the mess room (dining room) and the food hatch (the galley (kitchen)) lies behind it.  This is arguably the most important room on the ship!  It has full length glass windows down its whole length so we get a good view at mealtimes.  We are fed frequently and very well! 

Whilst on board, we are mostly left to do our own thing, but we do also spend time helping the crew with housekeeping tasks (peeling potatoes, hoovering, scrubbing etc).  We have a large bar and lounge.

The cabins are spacious.  The ship is not currently full so we have a cabin each and plenty of room.   

At the start of each Antarctic season, the ship, fully laden with food, supplies and science equipment for the research stations, sets sails from the UK and travels south to do a lap of all of the British Antarctic research stations.  At the end of the season it does the same, and in between it conducts Antarctic scientific research at sea.  It transports people to the research stations and resupplies the stations with all the food and equipment needed for the following year.  First stop this year is Signy research station on Sunday, where I will be getting off to do my work. 

Heading South

Welcome to another season of my blog.  This blog started back in 2008 when technology in Antarctica was somewhat primitive and it was a good way to get stories and photographs back to multiple friends and family in the UK using as little internet as possible.  With fast internet and many other types of communication now available, blogs start to feel a bit dated, but somehow it still manages to be the easiest way to reach everyone and so I will continue!  I hope you enjoy it.  This will be my tenth visit to Antarctica since I started working for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) 18 years ago.  Some things will therefore be very familiar to those who have followed the blog for many years, but for those who are new, I’ll try to fill you in with what I’m doing and show the bigger picture of how the whole thing works. 

On 8th November 2025 we set off for Antarctica.  A group of about 20 of us left the UK on Saturday afternoon, flying from Heathrow to Sao Paulo in Brazil, then onwards to Montevideo in Uruguay.  Here we joined the ship, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, which is taking us to Antarctica.    

 

 

The view from the front of the ship looking out over the city, looks like this.  

We spent our arrival day exploring some of the sights of Montevideo and the port.  The city was a bright bustling place with lots going on and a casual laid back feel.  Here are a few pictures.  

The port was a fascinating place, apparently with a complete lack of any health and safety considerations.  We were free to go wherever we wanted and see all that was going on.  Some areas were densely packed with fishing vessels, others with the most enormous cargo ships being loaded and unloaded day and night.  I think this was the biggest ship I’ve ever seen.

This one was loading timber and was also pretty substantial!  Again, nothing to stop you wandering right up to take a look!

These smaller fishing vessels use strings of glass lights when out at sea to lure plankton and tiny fish to the boats, which then in turn attract the squid the boats are hoping to catch.  

Montevideo is pleasantly warm and we were treated to sunny weather and a nice sunset. 

We set sail on Monday evening to calm seas and warm temperatures.  First stop will be Signy Research Station (which is where I will be getting off) in about a week’s time. 

The end of the adventure

During our time in the Falklands we had some nice days out hiking and sightseeing.  The weather in the Falklands is constantly changing, and it seems usual to have all seasons in one day, with a persistent bitterly cold wind blowing at quite some speed, whatever else the weather is doing.  Here are a few pictures.

Bodie Creek suspension bridge- the worlds most southerly suspension bridge, now falling into ruin and no longer in use.  It was built in the 1920s to transfer sheep across the river to avoid a 100 mile detour around the coast…

Another ruin, the disused Cape Pembroke lighthouse (now superseded by the tiny little fencepost looking thing directly to the right of it which is a light and serves the same purpose)…

Goose Green, one of the outlying settlements in the Falklands…

The pleasingly named diddle-dee berry, used to make jam, growing in the Falklands…

Rock and sandy shorelines…

Grassy landscapes…

And huge open beaches (which usually have dolphins playing in the surf)…

Stanley church…

And my final photograph, taken from the plane as we left for home, showing the tiny red dot of the Sir David Attenborough ship, still moored in Mare Harbour…

Thanks to all the team at Bird Island who made it such an enjoyable season this year.  Bird Island is such a unique and special place and it was a real privilege to be working there once again.  Despite a number of years passing since my first visit, the magic of this little island for me has not changed one bit. 

I will sign off here, now safely back home in the real world after a wonderfully enjoyable trip.  Thanks for reading my blog- until next time, goodbye.

Volunteer Point

We spent the 2^nd to the 8^th April in the Falklands, still onboard the ship, moored at Mare Harbour, where we could come and go as we pleased.  During that time we had some days out exploring in the car we hired.  One day we went to Volunteer Point, which has 3 species of penguin (gentoo, king and Magellanic).  These were the king penguins (the brown ones are the chicks)…

I’ve not seen Magellanic penguins on this trip as they don’t go as far south as South Georgia, so it was a nice treat to see these.  Magellanic penguins are quite secretive and nest in burrows.

The beach at Volunteer Point is enormous and very lovely (although with a bitingly cold wind that was definitely not as warm as it appears in the photos!)

Volunteer Point also has dolphin gulls…

And turkey vultures…

Plus sea lions on the shore and Sei whales just offshore in the waves (which I didn’t manage to get any pictures of).  It was a great day out!  I’ve run out of photo space on this blog so I’ll put a few more of our other trips out onto my next blog.

On 9^th April we finally left the Falklands, and flew home, via the same route that we came 3 months ago- the MOD flight back to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, via Ascension Island.  We arrived back in the UK on 10^th April and I am visiting my parents for a few days before heading home to Swaledale.  I’ll put a few more pictures of our final Falklands days out on here soon.

The largest iceberg in the world

Part way between Signy Island and the Falklands we took a small detour to visit the largest iceberg in the world, unimaginatively named A23a.  This berg broke off from Antarctica in 1986, and remained grounded on the sea bed for many years.  In 2020 it started slowly moving northwards and now lies pretty much on our route home.  It is currently a massive 40 miles long by 32 miles wide and is a huge flat sheet of ice, with edges beautifully scalloped by the incessant battering of the southern ocean waves.  We were able to get quite close to it and get some amazing views.

One morning at sunrise we were treated to some very nice anti-crepuscular rays- these are like the sun rays you see around a sunrise, but with the added confusion of being on the horizon directly opposite the sun instead of around the sun itself, resulting in something that looks like a sunrise but without the sun!

On our final morning at sea we were treated to a lovely sunrise. 

We have now arrived into the Falkland Islands where we are spending a week there before flying home on 9^th April.  We are still aboard the ship and are moored at Mare Harbour, which is the military port that supports the RAF base at Mount Pleasant.  It is in the middle of nowhere, about an hours drive from the capital Stanley, so we have hired a car so we can get out and about and see the islands.