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It is early evening and we are in Terra Nova Bay. The view is spectacular – the gentle evening sun, the snow-covered mountains, the huge, mirror-calm, icy bay. On the shores of the bay we can see the Italian and Korean stations.
The ice conditions were favourable during our approach to the Bay; mostly soft pancake ice and just one strip of thick ice floes that slowed us down to one or two knots. Minke whales were very patchily distributed through the ice – we had a run of four or five large pods and then nothing for several hours.
We are now using the multibeam sounder to map the sea floor to identify a position to drop the moored echosounder. Once the equipment has been deployed we will leave the bay and head back towards our previous trawl locations and the blue whale hotspot. On leaving the bay we had hoped to head north and then east but by staying further south it’s likely we will avoid some rough weather.
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.