This week at Macquarie Island: 18 May 2018

This week, with the help of many on station, the 10 metre tilting mast holding the anemometer was swapped for an eight metre tilting mast on top of a ‘pregnant base’. This is a setup that the Bureau of Meteorology often uses in remote locations.

Our Automated Weather Station (AWS), the computer that records all the measurements from our remote sensors, lives inside the Meteorology office. In remote weather yards the AWS is situated inside the pregnant base, and sends weather data back to the central message system.

There are a lot of uncertainties in the upcoming station modernisation — where the new Bureau office will be, whether our yard will move, and most importantly whether modernisation operations will impact our long term readings.

Establishing the new mast is the first step in a process to ensure any impacts are recognised. The next step will be to install a new instrument screen alongside the anemometer mast to hold comparison instrumentation. The data collected will be recorded by a new AWS that will be installed within the pregnant base.

Not only will the new AWS record data to compare with that already collected, it will also be used when the Met office on Macca is transitioned to its new location.

This week our Lion King loving doctor Cathryn celebrated her birthday and of course we helped. Annette, our Chef, asked Cathryn what she wanted and she replied ‘something ethnic’. What we got was a banquet of epic proportions.

After we had demolished that, the pièce de résistance, a raspberry and lemon cream-filled pistachio meringue layered dacquoise was sung into the room, accompanied by Danielle on keyboards, Rich on lid cymbals, Chris H on bowl drums and Angus on ukulele. Needless to say there were a lot of laughs — and the dessert didn’t last long!

1. Have the elephant seals at Macquarie Island learnt to read?

See figures 1 and 2 — Ele seals are very adept at opening gates and latches etc, but there is as yet no conclusive proof that they comprehend sentences.

2. Stones recently noticed on Macquarie Island beaches were recognized as ‘foreign’ and not from the island. Where did they come from?

See figures 3 and 4 — The stones found on most westerly facing beaches on the island are creamy white pumice stones, light enough to float around the world after being erupted from a volcano of the right composition — perhaps from Heard or MacDonald Island, or even further afield.

3. Is there evidence that Macquarie Island has produced at least one Australasian Darts Champion?

See figure 5 — Insufficient data available to verify this claim but Macca plan to be very competitive at this year’s annual dart competition between the stations.

4. Were there high level diplomatic talks over the weekend with Macca locals about the proposed new station to be built on the island?

See figures 6 and 7 — Talks were at a high level (on the plateau). Locals appear nonplussed by it all.