John Ridgway Save the Albatross Voyage 2003-4

Birdlife Volunteer:

- Leg 1, North of Scotland to Canary Islands

- Leg 7, South Georgia to Gough Island

- Leg 8, Gough Island to Capetown

... a Monday morning meeting in the predator ecology group at the British Antarctic Survey offices in Cambridge. We had just finished chewing over yet more vital admin issues, when John Ridgway's voyage was mentioned. The opportunity to make a difference, sailing, and a return to South Georgia; my heart skipped a beat, then began racing. I looked up, trying not to be seen checking my PhD supervisor's face what chance I had of getting the go ahead to join the trip.

I am working on my PhD, with the British Antarctic Survey, looking at the foraging distribution of Antarctic fur seals and macaroni penguins around South Georgia.

I have had a love for nature, adventure, and the sea from an early age (though brought up land-locked in West Yorkshire). When I came to study marine biology at Bangor University my yearnings and real love for marine biology and the sea became clear. At university, a group of us put together our student loans to buy a small boat and set about surveying the marine life, and in particular the grey seals of North Wales.

I later worked on sea birds, seals, and another love of mine - plankton all around the British Coast. Before starting my PhD, I spent a summer working with Aberdeen University on fulmars, common seals and dolphins around the Moray Firth and Orkney.

I had wanted to visit South Georgia for years, and my season there in 2002 did not disappoint. I went to study seals and penguins, but it was the wonder of the albatross and icebergs that sent shivers down my spine. Though in modern times, many more than explorers do get chance, Ernest Shackleton's phrase "only explorers see these sights" does ring true, you feel amazingly privileged to see one of the most beautiful and wild places on earth. What's most important now is that our children also can take that deep breath of wonder at the world.

This world, our environment faces many challenges which are sometimes beyond our capacity to resolve, but sometimes relatively simple steps can make a significant difference.

The albatross symbolises and expresses all these things. It wanders the earth apparently alone, independent and magnificent, but in fact it is affected by the unthinking things we do. It can be saved with little more than an inexpensive compromise of fishing techniques.

Without wishing us to repeat the voyage of the ancient mariner, the symbolism is powerful. Coleridge reminded us of the value and importance of the albatross, and that if we take it from the oceans, our future is threatened. The albatross was the first icon for the British of the need to respect our environment. For a sea-going nation, almost the only environmental message we had was echoed in that poem - Do not kill the albatross. For those who read it, the poem carries messages about the possibility of our redemption by the natural world, about the ability of that world to forgive us, to take us under its wing, and save us from our own folly.

It is a desparate irony that 200 years later, the stricture that we must not kill the albatross is ignored. We stand in peril along with the albatross. If its beauty and wonder can be brought back to awareness, it may yet help save us all.

This voyage must reinforce that message.

I have had my fair share of adventures, but this will be my greatest. I just can't wait to get going.

Matthew Swarbrick

Cambridge, England

May 2003

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