Everyone has boarded Le Soleal safely and our destination is the Subantarctic Islands, named after the Antarctic and Sub tropical convergences. The passengers are split 115 Australian and 55 French, with the expedition crew made up of predominantly Australian and New Zealand based naturalists. As expected, we are well below ‘full’, which is good.
The Sub-antarctic islands are some of the remote and least visited in the world. As an example. 40,000 people visited Antarctica in the last year, and less than 1000 have visited the Sub-antarctic Islands. Less than 300 have visited the Bounty and Antipodes Islands in the same period. Access is strictly controlled, and many of the islands can only be seen from zodiac cruises rather than landings. Our planned itinerary is mapped below, and as of day 1, we’re on track with decent weather forecast for our first destination – the Bounty Islands group.
Map
It is approximately 700 kilometres sailing to Bounty Island from Akaroa, so today is spent with the usual IAATO briefings and decontamination of boots, parkas and any other equipment that will be taken onshore during landings. Landings will be few and far between – our first landing is 4 days away at the Campbell Islands, weather permitting.
Some of the rarest birds in the world are also endemic to these island groups, and the first of them are seen today flying around the ship – Salvin’s albatross, notable for its pretty grey head, and the Southern Royal Albatross, which has one of the largest wing-spans of any bird.
Tomorrow’s destination, Bounty Island, is off-limits for landings, so zodiac cruises will be the order of the day, assuming that the weather holds.
