I have never seen so many seabirds in my life. The air above the Bounty Islands is dark – a mist that resolves through binoculars into a flurry of whirling albatross. Salvin’s albatross breed here with a population of some 80,000 birds, interspersed with thousands of Erect-crested penguins, Fulmar prions, and Snares Cape petrels. It’s not long before we spot the bird of the day – the endemic Bounty Island shag. They fly the length of the ship and pass over the bow, skimming through the arch of a rainbow that drops into the sea at the northern end of the island chain. The morning sun is gold, but the wind is howling, and the sea is throwing us from side to side. There’s nothing to do but haul out a long lens, brace myself out on deck, and photograph the chaos as we plough up and down the eastern side of the archipelago.

This is the subantarctic. Although we’re at the northernmost island group, the weather is living up to its notoriety in the roaring forties. And this means that it’s albatross weather. True to form, the airspace around the ship is thronged with seabirds. Shags flap hurriedly past, albatross skim and bank over the crests of the swell, and petrels are hurled along by the sheer velocity of the wind. The sea around us is carpeted in bobbing albatross and perforated by porpoising penguins.

It’s the most impressive sight I’ve ever laid eyes on. The air is full of salt and spray, and trying to keep anything in the viewfinder for long enough to make a composition is a serious effort. One second I’m focusing on the milieu of birds that are circling over the colonies, and the next there’s nothing by waves through the viewfinder. With one leg braced against the railing and my back to the wall, I can roll with the swells while keeping both hands relatively free to photograph. The ‘one hand for the ship’ rule goes out the window when you’re a photographer, the light is this good, and the sky is full of action. It’s a back and two feet for the ship instead. Perhaps I should invest in a climbing harness…

The Bounties are the smallest by land area of our subantarctic islands. They’re 135 ha of rocks in the ocean, boasting one vascular plant species – Cook’s Scurvy grass. The Bounties are granite and guano, polished by the constant battering of the Southern Ocean. The sheer cliffs are skirted with bull kelp, which is apparently an unusual gold in colour. At the moment the only thing I can see at the base of the cliffs are formidable swells, throwing up explosions of white water.

The Bounty Island shag is thought to be the rarest in the world – numbering a little over 1000 birds in the 2013 count, which also included the season’s new juveniles. The previous November, the population count had been less than half this number. They were described in 1900 and given the name Leucocarbo ranfurlyi, after the fifth Earl of Ranfurly, who was Governor of New Zealand between 1897 and 1904. He organised the expedition on the steamer Hinemoa to collect specimens of birds from all five subantarctic island groups. 

Seabirds follow us as we roll away, our course bound for the Chatham Islands. The sun vanishes and the weather closes in, grey and heavy. The swells heave and the wind intensifies, ripping spray from the crests. I can’t help but think that it’s perfect. Perfectly wild. As nice as a calm day to zodiac around the Bounties would have been, it’s in this weather that the seabirds are most at home in the sky. But now it’s time for breakfast, and I have to make my way back inside, clutching at the railings and using the movement of the ship to give me momentum up the deck and through the doors.