Macca Mayhem

We are finally anchored at Macquarie Island, fondly known as “Macca” (of course, Australians have to shorten everything!), after a fairly smooth transit down from the Auckland Islands – approx. a day’s sailing.  Maybe it seems smooth because we are all getting our sea legs!  A couple of lectures down now, they appear to have gone down well, not too technical, and people are asking questions!

Another World Heritage site, Macca is the only place on the earth’s surface where mantle rocks are expose.  This is due to the Australian Tectonic Plate being subducted (sucked!) underneath the Pacific plate, and in the process a rift closed which extruded molten rock from the upper mantle to the surface.  The rocks form what is called an “ophiolite” sequence.  The island is still rising at the rate of slightly less than 1mm per year!

Today we went zodiac cruising down at Lusitania Bay (Lucy!!).  You cannot land there – in fact there are very few places you are allowed to land, and all of them are in the far north of the island.  Lucy has a large colony of King penguins, also a few Rockhoppers, and a few of the endemic penguins to Macquarie Island, the Royal penguin.

Also saw both the Northern and Southern Giant Petrel, black-browed albatross, fairy prion and light-mantled sooty albatross (told you I am becoming a bird nerd!)

In the early days, sealers exterminated the island’s population of fur seals, and nearly did the same to the elephant seals!  Then in 1870, gangs came to exploit the penguin colonies for oil.  The remains of some of the large digesters in which they boiled the penguins can still be seen at Lusitania Bay, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of penguins!  I’d say that’s karma!

Brian and Grant said today was the best day ever!