i 4 2 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



programme, and the rather urgent need for repairs to some of the auxiliaries, was such that we had 

 been fortunate in carrying out most of the coverage planned before proceeding to Simon's Town, 

 where we arrived on 16 March. 



Survey II (September-October) 

 The second survey of the current had not originally been contemplated, but preliminary examination 

 of the results of the first survey indicated that a repetition would be very desirable, and subsequently 

 a necessary alteration in the programme of the ship made it possible. It was decided that certain 

 extensions to the programme would greatly enhance the value of the repeated stations. Details of this 

 expanded programme were decided upon by Mr Clarke, and its value can readily be appreciated from 

 the results obtained. 



Leaving Simon's Town on 19 September 1950, we worked a series of bathythermograph stations 

 (see Fig. 2) round the Cape of Good Hope, and up to the Orange river mouth where the ship arrived 

 on 21 September. Numerous fur seals were encountered on this journey, and several fairly extensive 

 patches of olivaceous coloured water were crossed. Full stations were worked in approximately the 

 same positions as on the first survey, while the ship steamed out along the Orange river line, and this 

 was completed on the 23rd. Our course now lay north-eastwards, repeating bathythermograph 

 observations, and the inner end of the ' Sylvia Hill ' line was reached on the 25th. The full stations 

 WS 1064 and 1065 were completed by about midday on the 26th, and then a slight diversion was 

 made to take some bottom samples to the north of the line. This included a circumnavigation of 

 Hollam's Bird Island, a guano island concerning which the following extract is quoted from Dr Clarke's 

 journal: 



By 1700 hrs. we had approached to within half a mile of Hollam's Bird Island. As we steamed over the shelf which 

 surrounds the island, the echo-sounder showed several fish shoals, densely packed, in ten fathoms of water. 



The island is small and low, not rising more than forty or fifty feet in its highest part. . . . An elaborate sheerlegs 

 is a conspicuous feature of the island, and its skeleton framework overhung the rock strandflat and adjacent breaking 

 water, like some part of the wrecked architecture of an amusement park — even to the strings of electric lamps 

 counterfeited by rows of cormorants sitting equally spaced along the struts of the sheers. Near this structure stood 

 a small roughly built shed — the island is visited at times by the government guano collectors. 



The higher ground lay back from the landing place, and from these higher parts the cliffs fell away steeply, the 

 yellowish rock face being boldly streaked with white spillings of guano. And everywhere, crowded thickly upon 

 the slopes, and as far as the highest point, were the fur seals. As we came within half a mile we could hear their 

 barking above the drumming of the surf. From a distance it was a dog-like noise, like many packs of hounds, only 

 deeper in tone. The din must have been tremendous for anyone landing there and walking among the crowded 

 seals. There were many hundreds of seals on this scrap of rock: I made no estimate, but Mr Currie put the popu- 

 lation around 1300, probably more. The island with its multitudinous seals looked like a currant cake, of the kind 

 children call 'flies' funeral'. The shiny coats caught the sun, and reflected so many black points, some in slow 

 movement and some quite still, on the wet slopes and crags. Most movement was on the lower rocks, near the land- 

 ing-place, where the heavy surf was lively with heads and flippers and the strandflat populous with seals coming 

 and going from the water. 



Although I could only, from the distance at which we sailed, identify among the birds the cormorants on the 

 sheers, there were obviously great numbers of birds grouped among the seals. At 1700 I counted flocks of about 

 fifty cape gannets, fifteen cape cormorants and five southern black-backed gulls ; and also five cape pigeons, although 

 these were farther off. 



The visit to Hollam's Bird Island was worthwhile if only to have seen so much life on this tiny island off 

 the barren 'Skeleton Coast' — life so teeming that only a scene in Antarctic seas is comparable. It brought home 

 more vividly than anything else how real and astonishing are the effects of the productivity of the Benguela 

 Current. 



