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Today the snow showers cleared to give a clear sky and a calm sea. We are now in brash ice north of the Ross Sea and early this morning the acoustics and sightings teams cooperated well to find a blue whale amongst the floes. This blue whale had been making the quieter ‘d calls’ through the night which allowed us to determine its position with reasonable accuracy. We tried to follow this whale to map its surfacing behaviour but while it went under the floes we had to go round them so this proved rather tricky. Later in the day we found another blue whale in less ice and this time the follow went well.
Again we approached both whales for photo-identification and biopsy and once more the photography was successful but we could not get close enough to collect a skin sample.
Remarkably the photo-identification images taken today showed that one of the blue whales was the same animal we photographed four days days ago near the Balleny Island some 350nm to our west.
We have now just completed another krill survey and are heading east following the distant calls of more blue whales.
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.