The map of Tierra del Fuego is littered with so many sad place names that you’re often left feeling that its first European visitors just weren’t having a very good time. Places like Disappointment Bay, Port Famine and the Gulf of Sorrows hardly offered encouragement to potential colonists – and even today a traveller might be wary of pointing their compass into these particular wilds.
But names can be deceptive. One such location, Useless Bay, has perhaps the most unpromising name in geography, but today is finding its feet as a wildlife watching destination just a short distance from Punta Arena, Chile’s gateway to southern Patagonia. And now, scientists are discovering that its true riches lie beneath its waters. To find out more, we spoke to Mathias Hüne, a marine biologist who has been working with the conservation organisation Rewilding Chile, to uncover its incredible underwater world, and how it can be protected for future generations.
Useful for penguins
Useless Bay, or Bahía Inútil as it is known in Spanish, is a wide body of water that forms a giant spur off the Strait of Magellan. It received its unfortunate name in 1827, when it was visited by the British Royal Navy ship HMS Beagle (later to carry Charles Darwin on a much more famous voyage), who found its exposed landscapes scoured by wind and impossible to safely anchor in. For naval purposes, it was indeed quite useless.
Perhaps because of its name, Bahía Inútil never saw any great settlement by colonists, who preferred the far more convenient location of Punta Arenas on the other side of the strait. It’s only in recent years that that bay has troubled the attention of outsiders, when in 2013 a group of king penguins arrived in the bay, and to everyone’s surprise, decided to form a small breeding colony.
Bahía Inútil is now home to the only colony of king penguins on mainland South America, carefully protected by the local landowners. As a result, a trip to see the king penguins has become a popular overnight side trip from Punta Arenas.
Beneath the waves
The arrival of the king penguins suggested that there may have been more to this apparently useless stretch of water than had previously been imagined. Over the last year, scientists from Rewilding Chile have been surveying Bahía Inútil to find out just what else it might be hiding. The results have been astonishing.
‘One of our goals in our marine conservation program is related to the creation of marine parks,’ explains Mathias Hüne, a marine biologist who has been diving in Patagonia’s waters for over 20 years. Although Chile has been a pioneer in recent years in designating large swathes of land as national parks, less than 1% of its marine ecosystems are currently protected.
The waters of Bahía Inútil are thick with giant kelp forests. These thick towers of seaweed, which can stretch more than 30 metres in length, harbour a wide variety of sea life, and play an important role as nurseries for many fish and invertebrates as well as providing shelter and hunting grounds for larger species.
‘Kelp forests are a dominant component of the coastal seascape of the entire Magallanes region,’ says Hüne, which makes places like Bahía Inútil an important biodiversity hotspot. ‘Diving in these forests is like being a bird, because the visibility is amazing – sometimes it’s 20 metres or more. It’s one of the best places to dive I know.’
The clarity of the water suggests that the bay could be a real divers paradise, but Hüne cautions against getting too excited about the prospect. The same strong winds that inspired the Royal Navy to dub the area Useless Bay also mean that it’s a very hard place to dive, and explain why it’s taken biologists so long to carry out a survey. Diving is only practical in the winter months when the weather is reliably calm.
‘It’s very, very cold and you only have a few hours of daylight,’ says Hüne, who says that diving in the bay is comparable to diving in Antarctica. Even with a dry suit, it’s only possible to stay in the water for an hour, which makes it tricky to carry out the work needed for a complete survey of all the species amid the kelp.
Unexpected species
The survey work consists of carrying out a series of line transects, carefully recording every species encountered, along with further water sampling to record plankton health. The kelp forests have proved to be home to a huge number of species, from crustaceans, scallops, octopus and squid, to humbler species like sponges and anemones that nevertheless play their own important role in the local ecosystem.
One species that proliferates in Bahía Inútil is the shrimp-like munida, also known as the lobster krill, which Hüne explains is a keystone species as it a food item for many species, including the humpback and sei whales that are found in the Strait of Magellan. It’s also a favourite prey item for king penguins, which goes some way to explaining why the bay’s newest residents decided to stick around and form a colony here.
The team were also surprised to find ice fish in the bay. This group of species, so named as the lack of haemoglobin in their blood gives them a translucent appearance, are normally only found in Antarctica. As a fish specialist, Hüne is particularly pleased with this discovery. ‘We have the first record of a larval stage of this fish in Patagonia in Bahía Inútil,’ he says, suggesting that the fish may be breeding in the bay. This makes protecting its waters even more important: ice fish is another important food item for other species.
Future protection
As he goes through the list of discoveries in the bay, Hüne laughs at the irony of it having been named Useless Bay. ‘Perhaps it’s good, because with this name we could protect this area,’ he says, noting the lack of economic development on this side of the Strait of Magellan.
The next step is to take the data so that a formal proposal for protecting the bay can be created. One thing that Rewilding Chile has aso learned is that just having a report isn’t good enough. It’s essential to work with the local communities. ‘It’s the most important thing,’ says Hüne. ‘If you don’t have the support of the fishermen, you’re nothing.’ This will become even more vital depending on whether the final proposal will be for complete protection of the bay to allow it to be mixed use, including fishing.
It’s a tricky question, but one that Rewilding Chile have dealt with in the past. Not far from Bahía Inútil is Cabo Froward, which in the last 12 months they have successfully proposed as Chile’s next national park (a project we’re supporting through the Swoop Conservation Fund). In fact, that’s where Hüne is heading next, to carry out more underwater surveys as part of that project.
But for now, he’s happy that the research team has started to put Bahía Inutíl’s ecological treasures on the map. It’s a good reminder that nowhere is truly useless: you just have to look below the surface. And if in doubt, ignore the grumblings of ancient mariners and listen to the penguins instead: they know a good thing when they see it.
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