Downtime in Christchurch

Winnie guards the Windsor B&B

With no hope of a plane south until Monday at the earliest, I had a few days to fill in Christchirch. On Sat, Annie, David and I went with Peter, a New Zealand filmmaker friend of David's, to a farmer's market in the nearby town of Lyttleton. This town is the main harbor for Christchurch, and is situated on a cove on the Banks Penninsula, which is a volcano poking up from the sea right on the edge of the flat Canterbury Plains. The steep-sided canyons of this vocano create a twisted coastline, with many coves and impassable headlands. At the market there were beautiful vegetables, and I was wishing for a kitchen to take full advantage.

Taylors Mistake

Next, Peter dropped Annie and I on the top of the ridge between Lyttleton and Taylors Mistake, where I surfed frequently when here before. We walked down a winding trail to the beach, sheep grazed and mountain bikers enjoyed gravity and the warm sunny day. Birds sang hidden in the grass and the ocean and distant snowy mountains made a beautiful scene.

Christchurch, Canterbury Plains, and Southern Alps from the Banks Penninsula.

We continued past Taylors mistake to Sumner, where we dined on bad fish and chips then caught a bus back to Christchurch.

Red-billed Gulls at Sumner Beach

That night Peter had us over for dinner. He and David are working on a project together called The Last Ocean, with the aim of protecting the Ross Sea from industrial fishing. This section of the Southern Ocean is the least impacted by humans anywhere in the world, yet in only the last half-decade big industrial fishing boats have begun plying its waters. Just last week a 130 km-long gill-net was found abandoned near there, with 29 metric tonnes of antarctic toothfish in it. Here is a link to a short news article on it: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/06/2735229.htm

On Sun I relaxed at the hotel most of the day, reading about penguins and doing a bit of work. In the afternon I went to the Christchurch Museum, and checked out exhibits on the Maori, Antarctic history, and NZ birds.

That evening we went to a presentation by David and Peter at the local art center about their Lat Ocean project. David gave a compelling talk about the science and ecology of the Ross Sea, and Peter showed a documentary about the place and their efforts to save it. Despite being one of the best-studied parts of the ocean, Antarctic Toothfish quoatas are being set for the Ross Sea based on very little information about the fish themselves and the effect their absence would have on other Ross Sea inhabitants. I left the Art Center feeling very inspired to do good science.

The Last Ocean web page is http://lastocean.com/. This trully is one of the last places on earth where humans have had very little impact. Its at least worth your time to check out the web page.

We're scheduled to fly to McMurdow Monday morning. Fingers crossed!!