Information
Comments
We returned to Portland last night in mirror calm conditions passing several pods of lazily blowing blue whales. The strong north-easterly blew up as forecast so we spent the day at the wharf generally regrouping, doing the normal chores and chatting to colleagues back in Kingston to further refine our survey design and procedures. Time inshore also allowed us to catch up with our aerial survey team and swap our experiences of what seems to be a bumper season for blue whales in the Bonney.
Tomorrow we will leave early to get back to our acoustics. The plan at this stage is to head south-east and deploy sonobuoys in the deep water off the shelf which more closely mirrors the conditions in which we’d be working with blue whales around Antarctica.
The forecast for the next few days isn’t fantastic but hopefully we’re all a little more robust than when we first started and we can quickly get back into the groove of locating blue whales acoustically.
REGARDS: Mike
Map
A map showing Australia and Antarctica. The map shows the journey of one voyage that has occured in the season, with each route highlighted in a distinct colour.