My Blog - Jeff Clarke

Sky Full of Egrets All the images in this blog were taken during the trip. Click on an image to display at full size. In the early hours of the 10th January I stepped aboard MV Boudicca, one of my favourite ships, in the Queensland city of Cairns. It would be the start of an adventure to explore a part of the world with a special appeal. The ship would be making 3 stops in one of the remotest parts of the planet, Papua New Guinea, it would also call in at the equally magical island of Komodo on route to Bali. As usual I was able to bring a companion along for the ride and on this occasion it was my good friend Laura Dennis, a fellow Ecologist and birder. We had a few hours ashore in Cairns before the usual speaker responsibi...

On the 20th September I joined the Fred. Olsen MS Boudicca at Newcastle (accompanied by my wife Adele) as a Guest Speaker. The cruise tour would take us out to the Azores in the Mid Atlantic, followed by Madeira, then onward to the canaries and then back up to Newcastle via the Portuguese coastline. Click the images to get a larger view Boudicca in Newcastle The prospect of so many sea-days; crossing some of the best cetacean waters on the planet, plus the chance of encountering migrating seabirds was too tempting to resist. As we proceeded out of Newcastle and down the North Sea the first of many  Northern Gannets ghosted alongside the ship, some being harried by Great Skuas but the first real highlight was an unidentif...