The Totorore Voyage SIGNED COPY

Century Hutchinson Ltd., Auckland, 1988. Navy hard cover with gilt titles on spine. Contents tight with just a scattering of foxing to the page edges. Signed on title page by the author and Mike Hurst who was a crew member for several months during 1983. DW has edge wear and a tear to the front fore corner. It has been covered.

The Totorore expedition was conceived as a circum-Antarctic voyage to study the seabirds of the Southern Ocean in order to further their conservation. Clark spent seven years building the 10 m yacht Totorore (the Maori name for the Antarctic prion) of kauri timber, completing and launching her in 1982.

The Totorore left Kerikeri on 26 February 1983, eventually returning on 6 November 1986, 3 years, 8 months and 16 days later, having travelled some 71,000 km eastwards, around and about the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic Peninsula, visiting numerous islands to survey and count seabirds. The most significant ornithological work was carried out in southern Chile where new colonies of several species were discovered, and in South Georgia where comprehensive and accurate counts were made of wandering albatrosses and king penguins along the long coastline. During much of the expedition Clark was accompanied and aided by one or two companions.
After the initial voyage, the Totorore continued its research trips and it was in the course of an expedition to recover satellite transmitters, used to track albatrosses breeding on the Antipodes Islands, that the Totorore disappeared on about 12 June 1999 off the south coast of Antipodes Island, along with Clark and his companion Roger Sale.