Beaked whales

In our national newspaper the NRC of 3th May 2014 I read an article about beaked whales. Between the 1^st and 6^th of April, at least five Cuvier’s beaked whales stranded on Crete. Very likely a military exercise with sonar in the same week caused this multiple stranding.

This reminded me of another article I read in the ranger’s diary on the “kilda.org.uk” website (http://www.kilda.org.uk/frame2.htm). In September 2013 a beaked whale stranded with her calve on St. Kilda. The calve managed to get back to deep water, but the mother unfortunately died. The mother was still lactating, so the chances of survival for the orphaned calve was considered very poor.

The family of beaked whales or Ziphiidae is a whale family of which little is known. They are very shy and they hunt in deep sea. There are six different genuses of beaked whales and at least 22 different species, some of which have never been seen alive.

Beaked whales are a remarkable family. Most of them live solitary or in small groups up to four individuals. Scientists shot satellite transmitters in the skin of a group of Cuvier's beaked whales and discovered that beaked whales can dive up to 3,000 metres deep. They hunt for squid or deep sea fish using sonar and they can stay down for more than two hours.

Because lungs can’t resist the high pressure in deep sea, beaked whales use their muscles to store oxygen. The muscles of beaked whales can take a very 
high amount of oxygen which is used very efficiently.

Stranding of beaked whales is rare. Multiple strandings of beaked whales only occur when military exercises with sonar are held. These stranded animals almost always show internal bleeding in head, lungs or kidneys; possibly caused by caisson disease (decompression sickness), although normally whales are well adapted to prevent caisson disease.

The stranded animal on St.Kilda was a Sowerby’s beaked whale or North Atlantic beaked whale (Mesoplodon bidens). The whale was examined by the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS). The examination hoped to establish the cause of death of this specific individual, and it would provide a lot of information about the species.

In the brain of this individual a blood clot was found. It is not clear whether this was the cause of the stranding or a result of the struggle of the creature on land.

For the ranger on St. Kilda it must have had mixed feelings; a unique chance to examine a rare, unknown creature, but unfortunately at the expense of a deceased individual and his orphaned calve.  

Island genes

Not everybody understands why I choose to spend my holidays on an isolated island.

Could it be persistent island genes I may still posess? Or does an illustrious ancestor of mine haunt me towards an island?

My family name is Schokker. A Schokker is a fishing boat, a kind of wrinkled pea or a resident of the former island in the North East polder called Schokland.
Before the Afsluitdijk between North Holland and Friesland was finished in 1932, the IJsselmeer was an innersea, called the Zuiderzee. Schokland was an island in the Zuiderzee.

Schokland was never as remote or isolated as St. Kilda, but the Zuiderzee was still tidal and could be very rough and treacherous. Schokland consists of peat, and the sea skipped off the land. The island was getting smaller and was threatened to dissappear completely.

The Schokkers were a seperate group of people. They had their own language, customes and clothing. They were mainly fishermen. In the 19th century fishing was no longer profitable and the people became extremely poor. The authorities tried to stimulate the people to leave the island. They broke down their houses or they gave the people a substantial amount of money to leave the island for good. In 1859 the island was finally cleared by order of the king.

In 1941 the dike around the polder was closed, and in 1942 the North East polder was fully reclaimed. Now Schokland is incorporated in the polder, but is still elevated and recognisable as an island. The island is just like St. Kilda an Unesco World heritage site because of its cultural value.

On Schokland the name "Schokker" didn't exist. We traced back our family line until 1710. This ancestor of mine wasn't born on Schokland. But before the Napoleonic era, people had no family name. A person was named after his father ("Jansons", in Dutch "Janszoon"), or to another feature. It might be that he was given the name because of his origin. But we are not certain; it might also be that he looked like a wrinkled pea.

Seawall and vicarage on Schokland

Isolated people

The people on St. Kilda lived very isolated, I wonder how much they differed from the people of the mainland. 

The first inhabitants of St. Kilda might date back from the Bronze Age from 3000 to 800 BC. Until the 14th century the Outer Hebrides belonged to Norway. Since the end of the 14th century, St. Kilda has been the possession of the MacLeod family of Harris.

The first detailed description of the people on the island is by Martin Martin who visited St. Kilda in 1697. He writes that the inhabitants on St. Kilda descend from people from Skye, Uist, Lewis and Harris. Their appearance is like the people from the isles and the mainland. They are very strong and have good eyesight and memory. It strikes him to find that the men barely have beard growth. The men also had strong ankles, which was probably the result of climbing the rocks barefoot from a very young age.

Martin mentions their lack of resistance for diseases. After the visit of the steward, who visited the isles every year to collect the taxes, many inhabitants run a bad cough.
This lack of resistance to illnesses will lead to a disaster some thirthy years later, when in 1729 the population of St.Kilda reduces from about 200 souls down to thirty as a result of a smallpox epidemic. Three adults survived along with eight boys on Boreray, where they were fowling when the epidemic broke out, and nobody was able to recollect them from the place for about nine monts. Only one adult and eighteen children survived the epidemic on Hirtha itself.

St.Kilda is repopulated during the 1730s with other people from Uist, Skye and Harris. The families were MacDonald, Fergusson, MacCrimon, MacKinnon, MacLeod, MacQueen, Gillies and Morrison. These families and their kin lived on St. Kilda until 1930, when the isles were abandoned.

In 1852 a group of 36 St. Kildans tried to emigrate to Australia, of whom only 16 survived the journey. Probably because of this small number of survivors, there was only one attempt from St. Kilda to emigrate.

There was no genetic difference between the people of St. Kilda and the people from the other Outer Hebrides. Only in habits and knowledge of the world they had their differences.

The penguin of the Northern hemisphere

Everybody who has ever seen a guillemot, razorbill or puffin, sees a comparison with penguins. Their feet far behind, they stand straight with their fatty belly on their short legs in their black and white plumage. Guillemot, razorbills and puffins all belong to the family of Alcidae. Until the mid19th century, another member of the Alcidae lived in the waters of the North Atlantic: the pinguinus impennis, garefowl or great auk. The great auk was the largest of the alcid family. It was about 75 to 85 cm tall and weighed about 5 kilograms. It couldn't fly, but was an excellent swimmer and diver.

The name pinguinus is supposed to originate from the Welsh "pen gwyn", which means "white head" and  refers to a white spot on the head in summer plumage. Penguins are named after the great auk, but the species are not related. The closest related bird of the great auk is the razorbill.
The great auk couldn't fly and was clumsy on land, however spent most of his time on sea foraging for food. It needed to go ashore only to breed.
For a nesting site, the birds needed rocky islands with sloping shorelines close to their feeding areas. These places are not very numerous, and there have probably been no more than 20 breeding grounds in the world. Only six former breeding colonies are known, among which one on St. Kilda.

Martin Martin describes the great auk or "gairfowl" in his "A voyage to St. Kilda" written in 1697. Martin travelled to St. Kilda in June 1697. According to Martin the great auk returned to  St. Kilda on the 1st of May annually and went away mid June. So it didn't have much time to rear his young. I haven't found any record of the St. Kildans hunting the great auk; Martin doesn't mention it. They certainly did not take the eggs of the bird, because - like the fulmar- the great auk layed only once every season

The bird was quite common until the second half of the 18th century. It was found in the North Atlantic from Canada and the United States, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, British Isles, France as far south as northern Spain. The story of its eradication is a cruel one. Vulnerable as they were on their nesting grounds, the poor creatures were hunted down for meat, feathers, down and oil. They were plucked alive, thrown in boiling water or used as fuel, for their oily skin was burning easily.
They were hunted so much, that already in 1553 the birds were officially protected.
Later, when they became even more rare, the birds were killed by strangling for collectors who wanted a specimen.

In 1844 a great auk was caught on Stac an Armin, and tied up alive. By that time the bird was already a rarity on St. Kilda, because the story goes that the inhabitants believed the auk 
was a witch who caused a storm and therefore beat it to death. I don't think the people from St. Kilda would have believed the auk was a witch had they been familiar with the bird. Anyway, this great auk is the last documented sighting in the British Isles. In the same year a breeding couple of great auks was killed in Iceland, and in 1852 the last individual sighting was recorded on Newfoundland.

Fowling (2)

In my post of February 10th, I told about the importance of birds for the people of St. Kilda, especially the fulmar, gannet, puffin and guillemot. Consequently, fowling was an important activity on St. Kilda.

Every bird specie was caught in a different way. Gannets, for example, leave a sentennial bird awake to warn the colony by danger. The fowlers would go to the cliffs by dawn in early spring. One man would climb up to kill the sentennial bird. If he failed, the sentennial bird would wake up the entire colony. After killing the sentennial bird the rest of the colony was taken from their nests and killed.

In May the fowlers would return to gather the eggs from the gannets from Boreray and Stac an Armin. And in August the young chicks of the gannets, the gugas, where gathered.

Young fulmars were harvested by mid August, when the fledglings would be at their fattest. The fowlers would take the birds from the cliffs, wring their necks and throw them into a boat. Harvesting young fulmars was a strenuous activity by which the women helped to carry the heavy loads to the village.
There was no egg collection from fulmars, because they only lay eggs once per season.

Puffins used to be the most numerous birds on St. Kilda; more than a million pair! The poor creatures were easily caught, by taking them out of their burrows by hand or with the help of a small dog. Puffins are very curious. They were sometimes caught by lowering a running noose over their heads. One caught puffin attracted the other birds to investigate what happened and made an easy catch.

Catching guillemot was done with a very special technique. The fowlers waited for the guillemot with a white sheet over their head, so they looked like a bird rock covered with guano. The guillemot would try to land on them and the fowler would be able to grasp them by hundreds.

Off course I feel sorry for the birds, and I am happy that they are no longer hunted, but I understand the need for the St. Kildans to do so. The number of birds and eggs harvested were enormous, but there is no evidence the populations of these birds declined because of it. There were so many of them! Seabirds can reach a very old age, so they have plenty of possibilities to reproduce. The fowling in those days never threatened any of the species to extinction. Today we are much more a threat to the birds than the St. Kildans ever were. The number of puffins is declining on St. Kilda and elsewhere because of a shortage of fish, probably a consequence of a warmer climate and overfishing.

Hopefully we still can turn the tide!

11 weeks to go

This week I received my "Passport to the Islands on the Edge of the World". The passport contains a lot of information about the St. Kilda accomodation and facilities, a kit list, the tasks and the potential risks for the volunteers.
The passport also includes the names of my colleagues in this particular Work Party.



There are five male and five female persons, from Australia, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands (me) and the UK. I am looking forward to meet my fellow volunteers. Perfect strangers, who will work and live together for a fortnight on a very small island! We probably will get to know each other very well. Maybe this will turn out to be the most challenging part of the adventure.

This week I shipped the final paperwork to the well known adress in Inverness, and I booked a hostel for the first three nights in Stornoway.
I plan to go to Leverburgh on Monday 2nd of June, so I'll have one day to explore Leverburgh. On Tuesday we will meet each other, and, if weather permits, we will be sailing to St. Kilda, -or Hjort, as it is officially called- on the 4th of June.

Three months before leaving!

I am still very excited with the news from February 18th that I'm selected for a Work Party on St. Kilda! But there are still three months to go before my departure. So, what have I been doing since?

The first thing I did when I heard the news was a tweet and a post on Facebook, with the link to my blog. Many people visited my blog since. I got a lot of -mainly positive- reactions to my plans as well as to my blog, but I also got some questions about St. Kilda to which I can't give an answer …. yet.

For example; one colleague asked me about St. Kilda's toilets! She made me promise to make a picture of a typical example.
Another was interested in the local whiskey brand. I'm not sure if St. Kildans brewed whiskey, but I promised him to find out. And now I sincerely hope they did!

February 19th I confirmed my participation by sending the acceptance form back to the committee.
I reserved a holiday from my work starting the end of May until 22nd of June and I booked  a flight to Stornoway on the 30th of May, so I have a few days on Harris before leaving.
I downloaded the public transport app of Scotland and found out that I can take a bus from Stornoway to Leverburgh, which will take me about three hours.

So now I'm going to find out what to do those few days on Harris before leaving for St. Kilda.
Any tips?