Will
November 29,2008, Maatsuyker Is

We were lucky enough to experience some real weather with a day of 50 knots and gusts to 67 knots. This is a view of Alones Gulch on the leeward side with a fishing boat anchored to the right. The opening of crayfish season seemed to bring out the testosterone in the fishermen as there were about 8 boats in the area. The gulch is home to a seal colony but numbers were down on previous years. We kept our distance, knowing how easy they are to panic having seen a video of the arrival of several dinghy loads of the Friends Of Maatsuyker Island people climbing up the track. Some leopard seals are often found on a small beach to the right but none were at home while we were there.

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Will
November 29,2008, Maatsuyker Is

At the end of each day, with a cosy brew,we watched the ever changing sunset over the Needles.

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Will
November 29,2008, Maatsuyker Is

Maatsuyker is unusual in that it has no snakes and the only mammal besides the seals is a small antechinus (marsupial mouse) so there are no land based predators for the muttonbirds - that is unless you count the leeches which seemed to be in pretty high numbers near the summit of the island. Here the mob is in deleeching mode - and wondering what the leeches feed on when humans are'nt wandering around.

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Will
November 29,2008, Maatsuyker Is

After 3 solid days of Hebe removal we started surveying new areas of the island in groups of 3. We kept our eyes open for blackberry as well as Monbretia and did find a few small outcrops of Hebe that we eliminated on the spot. Tad, one of the lighhouse keepers, Craig and Owen are in the pic pushing through the wind pruned scrub. The time of year selected to do the weeding took into account the breeding patterns of the short tailed shearwater (mutton bird). These birds usually come back from the northern hemisphere in October and then clear out their burrows, then go out to sea to fatten up and return in late November to nest. In completeing the transects we could not avoid standing on and collapsing some burrows but we figured the damage done outweighed the gains in keeping weeds at bay.

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Will
November 29,2008, Maatsuyker Is

We were briefed very efficiently by the organizer Craig Saunders in the safety and weed removal aspects of Hebe elliptica and got stuck into it. The native vegetation was quite different on the leeward side of the island with low ground cover on the exposed steep slopes but the ornamental weed had still mangaged to spread over 500 m from the infered initial sites near the houses. We found previously surveyed weeds using the GPS and they usually required attack with big loppers and chainsaw with a team approach allowing stacking of the cut branches in piles to rot and the stumps coated with straight glyphosate coloured pink. A pile can be seen to the right in front of Owen.

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