More Whales

Last weekend was a little different. A cruise ship was scheduled to arrive on Sunday, so we shifted our one day off to be Saturday and work a normal work day on Sunday, giving tours to the passengers, etc.

The glacier in the harbor has been calving like crazy this past week. This combined with a north wind jammed the inlet and water off station with brash ice. Over breakfast on Sunday morning we spotted 6-8 whales feeding on a giant school of krill just beyond this brash ice in front of station. The krill group was excited about this since they now knew exactly where the krill were to go tow for them and collect samples. They needed an extra hand with the poor weather- after asking for volunteers from the community and being turned down, I dressed up and went out. It was an amazing show for about 30 minutes (tails left and right and we even had a leopard seal following the boat as we trolled for a little while), then we had to get down to business- towing for krill, taking water samples in and out of the school, and doing a CTD cast (measuring Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) in and out of the school.

Photo from station of the three of us in the zodiac, Rubber Duke, beyond the ice with the whales.

We were out for about three hours in the wind and rain. When it was time to come in, it took almost an hour just to push through 300 feet of brash ice being packed in by the strong winds. After a 10 minute lunch back on station, it was time for me to go back out through the ice in another zodiac to give the tour talk aboard the Corinthian II cruise ship. It was a very long day, but the morning was very worth it.

Just a beautiful sunset we enjoyed a couple nights earlier.