SGHT Newsletter March 2024 |
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The recovery of wildlife populations at South Georgia is one of the world’s most inspiring ecological stories. Your support is helping this story to be spread to inspire others all around the world to do what they can to preserve the natural environment.
In this month’s newsletter we look back on the history of the South Georgia whaling industry through the words of Curator Jayne Pierce, and we introduce you to Øyas Venner, an organisation dedicated to preserving the Norwegian history of South Georgia whaling. Looking to the future, we promote the work of Happywhale who are helping with whale conservation efforts, and we bring you the next in our series of podcasts from Commensalis artist Michael Visocchi.
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Following centuries of near-catastrophic hunting of whales and seals at South Georgia, and the resulting invasive rats and mice brought to the island that decimated many bird populations and threatened others with extinction, there are now good news stories from a recovering ecosystem at South Georgia. These days, in no small part thanks to your funding of conservation projects such as the SGHT/FOSGI Habitat Restoration Project, GSGSSI’s dog biosecurity team and British Antarctic Survey’s research to understand whales in the region, the island is once again brimming with wildlife. |
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"The rewilding of South Georgia amounts to the single most uplifting environmental story in the world.”
- Ted Cheeseman, travel expert & founder conservation project Happywhale.com
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In February we joined in with the WWF World Wildlife Day campaign that encouraged brands to remove wildlife from their logos to encourage reflection on what a world without nature might mean. Small and large brands alike look eerily stark without their normal elements of birds, animals and plants, as did our SGHT logo without its penguins! |
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Click on the logo above to see our SGHT penguins fade away! |
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The thought of South Georgia without penguins, albatross, seals or whales is not one any of us familiar with this wildlife oasis would ever wish to think could be a reality. You can help us to protect South Georgia’s wildlife from ever disappearing by donating at sght.org or fosgi.org |
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Sharing the Lessons of the Island’s Whaling History |
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Below we share extracts from four blog posts by the South Georgia Museum Curator Jayne Pierce. In them she describes life and work on a remote island and how South Georgia was at the epicentre of a global whaling industry in the early 20th century that brought whales to near extinction, and how, nearly a century later, and thanks to exemplary environmental stewardship, the island is now described as an ‘ecosystem in recovery’.
Jayne writes, “Living on the island can be a challenge, life is busy, and it is not always easy, but the joys are vast, and it is a privilege to be able to live here. Everyday something new happens, an interaction with wildlife or a great discussion with a local or a visiting tourist. To watch the change in the seasons and see first-hand, the shift in breeding animals. The sights, the sounds and the smells are overwhelming, exciting and are experiences that you are unable to describe and impossible to forget.
The story of modern whaling – why it grew so prolifically – is a controversial and important narrative to tell as the world today continues to struggle with exploiting its dwindling resources….Along with cotton/slavery, textiles and other products, whaling competed for the claim of being the world’s first global industry.
But following the near obliteration of whale populations in the Southern Ocean through whaling, there are now hopeful signs of recovery. In January 2020, British Antarctic Survey fieldwork reported 790 whales during a 21-day survey, reporting that the Humpback Whale is now particularly abundant around South Georgia waters. More exciting, though, was the report of 55 Antarctic Blue Whale sightings, described as ‘unprecedented’.
Due to its remoteness, many potential visitors will never get to visit South Georgia, so our aim is to make the South Georgia Museum collections more accessible through a greatly enhanced digital presence. We are currently working on a big project to tell the hidden history of British whaling and the connection to South Georgia. Our aim is to create a living, growing digital time capsule where veterans of the whaling industry, their families and communities can come together to contribute and share their story with a wider audience in one place. We’d like to create a digital portal that will be story based, highlighting human connections, acknowledging the controversies, and capturing a sense of place and community.”
The portal will be called The Whalers’ Memory Bank. You can find out more about this ongoing project here.
Read the blogs in full at the links below:
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Øyas Venner - Friends of the Island South Georgia |
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Fountain with whaling sculpture, Sandefjord, Norway. CC licence |
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The majority of the men who worked on South Georgia in the whaling industry were from Norway. Many of them came from the district around the south Norwegian town of Sandefjord where there is a whaling museum, and which is home to Øyas Venner – Friends of the Island South Georgia. Øyas Venner was set up in 1994 as an association for ex-whalers, their relatives and those with a special interest in South Georgia and the Antarctic region. It aims to preserve and share Norwegian whaling, industrial and cultural history from South Georgia and the Antarctic area. It also has a proud history of supporting active conservation work in South Georgia. |
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Above: Øyas Venner members working in the cemetery at Husvik 1998
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The Bryggekapellet in Sandefjord, Norway |
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Øyas Venner has a special interest in maintaining the whalers’ cemeteries at South Georgia. There are several of these at the now abandoned whaling stations around the island. In honour of those who died whilst working in South Georgia the association also arranged for all their names to be included on tablets now displayed in the unique floating church, the Bryggekapellet in Sandefjord.
Members of Øyas Venner have made several special trips to South Georgia, including in 2005 to mark the centenary of the founding of the church at Grytviken. Even though they only have a couple of hundred members, Øyas Venner is an active organisation that participates in exhibitions, lectures, and production of film for television. It also produces an annual South Georgia calendar and kindly supports the work of SGHT by donating this for sale in the South Georgia Museum shop.
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Rare and Hard-to-Find Books for Sale |
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A selection of new, rare, and hard-to-find books on South Georgia’s whaling history can be found on the SGHT Online shop. Those below are just some of what is on offer; find the whole collection here.
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C A Larsen: Explorer, Whaler, Family Man
by Beau Riffenburgh £17.00
The story of Captain Carl Anton Larsen – the Norwegian founder of Antarctic industrial whaling (including Grytviken, the first whaling station on South Georgia) and an all-but-unknown polar explorer. During his Antarctic exploration he made key discoveries and observations and scientific collections. He proved himself a leader, who fought against the odds to keep his men alive when shipwrecked in the Antarctic and made a daring open-boat journey to save them. He was a pioneer and a visionary, but his story has been mostly forgotten!
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Shetland's Whaling Tradition
Kindly donated by the Shetland ex-Whalers Assoc. £20
Up until the 1960’s, whaling was an important source of employment for men from the Scottish Shetland Islands. This book describes Shetland's involvement in local and Arctic whaling and the memories and experiences of Shetland Whalers who worked in the South Atlantic and at South Georgia. Richly illustrated with 200+ photographs and maps. A remarkable insight into a vanished way of life.
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Austral Enterprises
by Ian Hart £32.00
A fascinating account of British involvement in the whaling and sealing industry which operated from South Georgia, the Antarctic, and also in the South Indian Ocean and South Africa.
Whaling and sealing in the southern oceans in the early 1900s was considered an honoured and respected industry, employing thousands of skilled men and workers from the UK in harsh, remote and demanding conditions to bring home important raw materials and products.
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Painting the Whaling Stations of South Georgia
by Theo Crutchley-Mack £25.00
Paintings, drawings and photographs by Theo Crutchley-Mack from his artist in residency at the South Georgia Museum. Theo captures the dramatic structures and rusting ships of the abandoned whaling stations in paint, pencil and on camera.
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Grytviken Seen Through a Camera Lens
£25.00
A collection of excellent, high quality and fascinating photographs of life at Grytviken in 1923, taken by whaler Theodor Andersson. What was life like for the whalers living and working on the remote island? These photographs provide some fascinating answers, showing the whalers at work and play, and the magnificent natural surroundings which formed the background to their lives.
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Pesca
by Ian Hart £42.00
The improved 2nd edition (published 2021) of this primary reference for the History of Compania Argentina de Pesca. An account of the pioneer modern whaling company in the Antarctic. This edition is much expanded and includes new information and photographs. A monumental work that provides not only a history of the company, but a feel for whaling and its consequences for both humans and mammals in the Southern Ocean. Print run of just 400. Includes 500+ photographs plus maps and illustrations.
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Whale Songs - A Sculptor's Journey to South Georgia |
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We are delighted to share with you a series of short podcasts as we accompany artist Michael Visocchi during his creative process to make inspiration a reality, the monumental artwork Commensalis: The Spirit Tables of South Georgia.
Each month we are bringing you a new podcast as we join the artist on his first journey to South Georgia and share his thoughts and, at times, overwhelming experiences.
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In this episode we join Michael as he begins to explore Grytviken, the abandoned whaling station on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia where the wildlife is not always helpful! |
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Commensalis will commemorate the loss and celebrate the recovery of whales at South Georgia. It will be a beacon of hope for everyone who cares about nature and supporting vital research to protect the future of whales in the Southern Ocean.
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Happy to Support Happywhale |
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Have you heard of Happywhale? It is the South Atlantic’s foremost whale identification platform and is fun for individuals whilst being important for whale researchers.
Happywhale, which records whale sightings from all around the globe, aims to increase understanding and caring for marine environments using accessible science that brings researchers and ocean enthusiasts together. The hope is that this collaboration will improve understanding of the world’s oceans and lead to them becoming better appreciated and protected.
Happywhale was founded in 2015. One of the co-founders, Ted Cheeseman, has decades of experience leading expeditions to Antarctica and South Georgia, where 20th century whaling had left the ocean almost empty of whales. Globally, three million whales were killed by commercial whaling; an industry that extinguished itself by hunting whales so effectively that few remained by the time the global moratorium on commercial whaling was signed in 1982. Ted first went to Antarctica in 1994 and in the next fifteen years his expeditions to South Georgia saw no large cetaceans. In 2011 this began to change; at South Georgia a couple of Humpback Whales were seen, then he heard stories of feeding groups of whales, and things continued to improve so that now super-aggregations of feeding whales are being seen offshore near South Georgia and at Shag Rocks, north-west of the island. In parallel, on the Antarctic Peninsula, whales in the 1990s were few and far between, but now they are abundant. One extremely productive voyage brought home records of 124 individually identified whales.
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"The recovery of whales in the Southern Ocean around South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most beautiful stories of rebirth on earth today.” - Happywhale
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So how does it work? Happywhale asks people to upload their whale photographs to the Happywhale.com website. There, any tell-tale markings will be analysed to see if your whale has been seen before. If it has, they will tell you when and where. The first time you submit whale images you are welcomed to the Happywhale team with your own member account. As you upload more images, you will see your list of whales grow and can find out where else your whales have been sighted and will know when and where they are next seen.
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Submit your whale photos, like this super Humpback Whale fluke taken by Jackie Lover, to Happywhale.com |
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The Hungry Humpback research team, who with your help are currently working on South Georgia, are some of the researchers who use Happywhale to help track the whales they are seeing in South Georgia waters. The team is uploading photos of all the whales they are seeing whilst they are working from the island this summer. They will use the results to help determine whale migration routes and the way the animals are using the ocean.
The Happywhale website has some great information. Their records show that some whales have gone 44 years between sightings, that Humpback Whales travel thousands of kilometres, and that the most frequently seen whale on their records is a female Humpback Whale called Flame which has been sighted nearly 600 times. Flame comes from the northern hemisphere. She was the calf of another known whale, Scrutineer, and has had seven of her own calves: Spark, in 2013; Ember in 2016; Bunsen aka Flicker in 2019; Smoke in 2020; Bolt in 2021; and Cinder in 2022.
Want a great excuse to revisit your old photos from your voyage to the region? You can also submit your older images of whales to Happywhale.com, which is a great way to get started. And if you are travelling in the future, you can prepare to get involved as the Happywhale website gives guidelines and instructions on how to take great whale ID photos.
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Send some of our eGreetings cards to loved ones and friends this Easter - it’s easy and quick and the environmentally friendly way to send greetings and support South Georgia. |
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We have a super selection of penguin Easter cards, and cards for other occasions too.
One donation gives you up to 100 Easter or Thank You cards to send by email, or five Birthday cards to send!
Explore our lovely card options now:
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Follow us on your favourite platform to find out so much more about South Georgia and the activities of SGHT
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