Because Macquarie island is so far away from other places, we have a sea day today and a sea day before we reached it. In fact, one of the problems with this trip is that there are a lot of sea days because the sub Antarctic islands are so far apart.
Both times we had a bio security check. All our outerwear gets checked for seeds, miniature pebbles, plant matter, anything, and it’s all removed. Velcro is particularly painful as it picks up everything. Boots are pretty bad too. Every time we’re going to land on a new island we need to get checked - no check, no landing. There are picks, brushes and vacuum cleaners (to remove dust) to deal with everything.
Each time we go out we walk through a disinfectant bath, and when we come back our boots are scrubbed, hosed with a high pressure washer and we walk through disinfectant again.
The islands all have their own unique species of plants and animals, so it’s important not to cross contaminate them.
During sea days we have a lot of things on the program. For instance, today we had birdwatching (there weren’t many birds because we weren’t going along the sea ridge like we did last time), two documentaries, two lectures, and a salsa dance class. Every day we have “tea time” (today was pavlova), where the pastry chef tries to fatten us some more, and some on the artists perform (we have four singers and three dancers).
Photo of the day.
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