As well as reporting and following-up on the matter of seabirds, the blog will at times become preoccupied with islands. We must have passed an awesome number during the trip, as well as stopping off on more than we had anticipated.

One story that links the two themes relates to my friend Martin Lockley, who I met 50 years ago. In 1927 his father Ronald Mathias Lockley took over the lease of Skokholm, a small uninhabited island off the coast of Pembrokeshire in Wales. 

He began to study the seabirds on the island, becoming a leading expert and lived the last years of his life in New Zealand, where he this time became a world expert on the ocean going seabirds of the Southern Palaearctic. (more later).

Shearwaters, Razorbills, Guillemots and Puffins were his early specialties, and many of these were observed over the side of the ship during our voyage.