You may have read the romantic novel or even seen the box office hit movie, The Notebook. But it’s safe to say the subantarctic version is much better.
It all began late one Wednesday night. After a long day walking along the coast I was reclining at the Green Gorge desk, knocking back a hot double strength BCJ (blackcurrant juice), mulling over the day’s data collection and listening to the hustle and bustle of the king penguin traffic outside, when in burst my albatross associate. The door slammed in the wind — she was obviously distraught. I swung my feet off the desk and attempted to console her. In between cries she declared her little red notebook had vanished. The severity of the situation slowly became apparent as she described the confidential information contained within: the names, addresses and total krill assets of each black-browed, grey-headed and light-mantled albatross on Macquarie Island, which in the beak of a villainous skua could have a dire result.
What my partner didn’t know was that in a former life, before becoming a Macquarie Island albatross researcher, I spent my days making a dime as a private-eye. My experience told me a case like this doesn’t come around often and seeing an opportunity to re-launch my detective career, I promptly declared the Green Gorge Private-Eye Service open for business.
After a minute or two with the distressed victim, it became apparent that this wasn’t a job for one. I poured a triple strength BCJ and prepared for a long night. With my Macquarie connections I knew the perfect spies for this needle in a haystack job. I called up Karen ‘Super Sleuth’ Andrew for all my evidence collection and analysis, Nick ‘The Grip’ McCabe as a heavy, in case any extra muscle was required, and most importantly Laura ‘The Nurse’ Williams to manage the anxious owner of the notebook.
Our first task that night was to collect as many clues as possible, here is what we extracted from the victim:
- She departed Waterfall Bay Hut at 0900 with an extremely full and heavy pack containing all albatross samples and banding equipment for the season. For easy access, the notebook was strapped to the outside of the pack;
- Our assignment for the day was to visit photo monitoring waypoints along the coast and photograph the escarpment for measuring vegetation changes;
- She was carrying a GPS that tracked her movements along beaches, through thick tussock and around deep and dark seal wallows.
We scrounged up as much evidence as we could to narrow down the search area. I grabbed my camera and reviewed my photo waypoints for the day as we had been working together. Upon zooming in on my first photo, I could see my ‘Alby’ colleague accidentally passing through the shot I had taken of the escarpment — with her notebook attached to the right side of her pack! Excitement building I scanned through the next few shots — nothing. We had narrowed our search area down by two kilometres, but we still had six kilometres to search. Looking at the second last picture my heart began to race again. This time I had caught our target with the notebook missing from her right side! This reduced our search area another two kilometres.
While I flicked through all the photos of the day our Super Sleuth downloaded the GPS track and then uploaded it back onto all of our GPS devices. We could now retrace her steps!
The Grip played his part by swaying a divining crystal over the Macquarie Island 1 to 50 kilometre scaled map, testing a few divining rods and reciting a few prayers to St. Anthony, the Patron Saint for lost articles. While the evidence these methods provided proved inconclusive, The Grip found plenty of untapped water resources around the hut.
That night a storm hit, heavy rain and 40 knot northerly winds beat down on our cosy hut. Our thoughts were with the notebook, out there in the wilderness alone. Would it be alright? Would it survive the night? Or would the high tide, wind or rain claim it?
The next day we arose early to sunshine and prepared the sniffer dogs — Finn and Wags — contracted for the task. They were shown a duplicate notebook, given a few albatross smelling items to scent and then the team headed up the jump up. We scoured the GPS route our ‘Alby girl’ had walked the previous day with a metre gap between us to ensure nothing was missed. With a strong northerly blowing we checked under each tussock along our path. Spirits began to drop two hours into our search when we reached wallow country. No one spoke of it, but the possibility that the notebook was lying at the bottom of one of these muddy pools was very real. It became clear that the stress of the job was getting to one of our team — Finn, driven to madness by the pressure, began rolling in fur seal poo.
Amongst the tussock and wallows we stood, a team exhausted and downhearted, just looking at each other. I knew as the sun passed overhead and began to drop, so would our optimism. I rallied the group. It was well past lunchtime and we hadn’t eaten. I suggested we carry on 50 metres to the beach stop for lunch, regroup and replenish energy stores before continuing our search.
I led the team through the tussock, around a rockstack, over a wallow and down onto the beach, heads low behind me. I look up at the rugged subantarctic windswept beach in front of me. My eyes diverted to the ground as I glimpsed red. I could not believe my eyes! I ran the last 20 m to the rocky shore and grabbed the bright red little notebook lying on the ground and held it above my head! It had survived with all data intact! Emotions were high as the notebook and its owner were reunited once again. The walk back to the hut flew as the team chatted excitedly about the lucky find. We got back to the hut, tired but ecstatic, and celebrated with a hot BCJ. I reclined back on the couch feeling satisfied that the first and probably most difficult case for the Green Gorge Private-Eye Service had been solved.
Signing off,
The Albatross Detective
Jaimie and Kate