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The krill survey overnight again showed that the krill are in highly concentrated but rare swarms. This makes the krill very difficult to sample because getting the small mid-water trawl net in the right place in three dimensions is not easy – as we proved this morning. Despite this early setback our blue whale ‘hotspot’ soon produced another sighting so once the trawl net was back onboard we conducted another focal follow. By mid morning we found a several pods that briefly coalesced into a supergroup of between 12 and 15 blue whales that blewg, rolled, porpoised and spy-hopped. This surface activity didn’t last long but it was incredible to see these enormous whales throwing themselves around producing masses of white-water.
With so many blue whales in such a small area we spent the rest of the day in close approach mode collecting as much photo-identification data as possible.
Tonight we will survey for krill again and tomorrow we intend to conduct a visual line transect survey to estimate the total number of blue whales within our hotspot of singing 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.