Steeple Jason Island, Falkland Islands Prepared by John Fowler Manager, Falkland Islands Tourist Board Submitted May 24, 1999

I know that the Falkland Islands seem impossibly remote to many people, but to those of us that live here, remoteness has a more specific focus, narrowing down to just a few islands in the archipeligo, which are fabled, but normally impossible to get to.

Since our government air service switched fifteen years ago from float planes to land planes, the number has grown a little, but top of anyone's list are still the Jason Islands: Steeple, Grand, Elephant , Flat and South, which lie at the extreme North West of the Falkland Islands. Due to the lack of sheltered anchorages and fresh water, none of these beautiful islands were ever inhabited though they were used for grazing sheep, a practice which ended over twenty years ago.

After nearly thirty years of longing, I finally got the chance to visit the Jasons, on the Golden Fleece, a sturdy motor-sailer owned and operated by Jérôme Poncet. Although it was April and therefore late in the season, I jumped at the chance. We were going to lift off two film-makers on an assignment for National Geographic, who were there to film the striated cara cara, one of the world's rarest birds of prey. Having left Stanley at 7 am on Friday morning we were scheduled to arrive almost exactly twenty-four hours later. Golden Fleece is a great sea boat, which was just as well as it was very rough. The only real highlights of the outward trip were the Eddystone Rock, a stack at the northern entrance to the Falkland Sound, which we reached just before dark fell. This was like a multi-story apartment block, jutting out of the sea, with fur seals in the bottom half finally giving way to cormorants on the upper floors. An hour later it was dark except for the eery glow of the halogen lamps of the squid "jiggers" lighting up the northern horizon.

Having jammed myself satisfactorily into a bench in the Fleece's roomy saloon, where the see-saw motion of the boat seemed less pronounced, I decided to spend the night there rather than head for my cabin in the bows. It seemed that I had just finally found sleep, after a restless night motoring into the teeth of a gale, when I was woken up again to find we were in sheltered waters at Steeple Jason. Stumbling up to the bridge I found the dawn just coming up, changing the grey to gold. The Golden Fleece was just chuntering about in the coastal kelp surrounded by fur seals and gentoo penguins doing mass displays of synchronised swimming, with patrolling sea lions joining in and the deck littered with tussac birds and clouds of cara caras hovering over us. It could have been the beginning of time.

The islands themselves are like dinosaur spines- a little flat ground on the coast, but quickly rising - and just packed with wild-life including mile after mile of black-browed albatross colonies and even at this time of year, penguins galore in evidence - gentoos and rockhoppers still about and the ground riddled with Magellanics burrows.

Two of us were put ashore to walk to where the film-makers were camped. In the first hour I used three rolls of film. Apart from the birds, the place is spectacular and untouched. The only trace of human habitation, a ruined shearing shed, where we sheltered from a sudden hail squall, is now home to cara caras.

The cara caras definitely rule, at least in the absence of the skuas, which apparently beat them up when they are about. The film-makers had had one of their three tents completely shredded by them and there were times when we were walking when it did seem a bit like a remake of The Birds, with up to one hundred following us at one point. It would not have been a good time to break a leg!

Our time ashore was all too short - fears about the rising wind caused us to hurry and spend less time than we would have liked at the albatross colonies. These had seemed to shimmer in a strange way as we approached. Getting closer, we saw that the occupants of the turret-like nests were no longer fluffy chicks, but fully-fledged young adults, literally getting the hang of flight by flexing their massive wings and using the fresh gale to lift them a few inches into the air, where they hovered briefly before settling once more.

The sail back to Carcass Island was grand, also. I have never ever seen so many albatross, particularly in the tidal rips between the islands where the ocean and the air above were white with them. A truly amazing sight. We anchored in Carcass Island bay just as evening was falling and got ashore to take a glass with Rob McGill, one of the nicest men on earth. Carcass Island to Stanley saw me asleep for the most part. We were able to run with sail and motor so the ride was steadier and we made the Government jetty in Stanley harbour by 10am Sunday morning. My office has now finally stopped going up and down!

While it is unlikely that the Jasons will ever become much visited and perhaps it is right that this should be so, the presence in the islands of two vessels for charter: Golden Fleece and the slightly larger, Meander does increase the possibility. Meander has at least one cruise planned for the coming season which will take in a visit to the Jasons as well as sampling the real delights of some of the other magnificent islands of our far west: Weddell, Staats, Tea, New Island, West Point and Carcass.

John A T Fowler, Manager
Falkland Islands Tourist Board
http://www.tourism.org.fk