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Departing Casey yesterday afternoon we moved sedately through the ice pack and across mirrored seas under a brilliant blue sky. For many aboard it was their first experience of that rare delight - a windless and sunny Antarctic summer afternoon – and we shared it with a good many penguins, seals, sea birds and more than a few whales. A very timely lift for those onboard.
An early start for many this morning including the ship's crew and krill scientists who commenced a trial run of the
krill trawl net on board in anticipation of conducting a series of extended trawls to collect krill samples for scientific research (more on this later). By mid-morning, the ship had arrived in the vicinity of our old friend the whale mooring. As Ben our communications technical officer writes:
'The Whale Mooring is a sound recorder. This one is moored to the sea floor about 285 km NNE of Casey Station, approximately 2700m deep. It's been there for about a year, and it needs to be collected to recover the recordings. The program was originally created to study the elusive Antarctic Blue and Fin whales, which are difficult to observe. However, sound has been recorded from all types of cetaceans and seals – Orcas, Sperm, Blue, Fin, Humpback, Minke, Sei and Southern Right whales, Leopard, Crabeater, Weddel and Ross seals. The sound recordings tell us about the seasonal movements of whales at a decadal scale. The AAD has been using whale mooring recorders since 2004, and has over 100,000 hours of recordings.'
Following careful work by Ben, including a number of 'pings' sent back and forth to determine its location, the retrieval message was sent to the submerged mooring, sending it on its slow ascent to the surface to join us.
Many pairs of eyes scanned the calm seas surrounding the ship in search of a tell tale flotation device however it was the sharp eyes of one of the designated 'spotters' up on the bridge that saw it first, some distance off the starboard bow. Under the watchful gaze of a pair (minke ?) whales the mooring was retrieved and a younger generation of recorder deployed.. comfortingly pinging its signal back to us as it sank down into the depths where it will remain.. ever vigilant, listening..
This evening amongst calm seas and fog, Ben is back on the bridge attending to the hourly sea ice checks. Tomorrow another day of marine science, another early start for our 'natural born krillers'.
Kind regards,
James and Dave
V2 Voyage Management
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.