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With some risk of sounding repetitive we’ve has another great day with the whales. We left port at 6am with some sea and swell from yesterday’s strong winds. A few of us had that horrible feeling that our seasickness would return but thankfully both the sea and swell dropped quickly and we all came good. The first sonobuoy of the day detected singing whales so we were soon in our acoustic tracking mode. Once again the acousticians did a grand job and the call of the ‘blow’ came from our ever-vigilant sightings team after about an hour on the given bearing. The whales were moving very quickly, at about ten knots, which unfortunately is about two knots more than we could manage so could only wave them off on their busy way.
Then things got a little tricky. Over a couple of hours we dropped two sonobuoys hoping to identify a new position but we couldn’t quite pin the whales down. Presumably this was because they were close to one of the buoys and moving quickly so the bearing was constantly changing. We also started to pick up one of their song types called a D-call which is not as loud at their other songs. This means that often we could only hear the song on one of the buoys and so could not triangulate a position which needs intersecting bearings from each buoy.
After a lot of steaming and creating a spider-web of a vessel track we finally got buoys in a position to hear D-calls in two buoys. This worked a treat - we got a position, entered tracking mode again and sure enough there they were right on cue – a lovely pod of three whales – and definitely blues this time! We got photo-identification shots for all the whales and then moved away.
Our plan now is to steam south and hopefully, during the overnight shifts, the acousticians will locate a new group well away from today’s whales.
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.