Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 17:09:50 +0000 To: karen@icess.ucsb.edu From: "Sirovic, Ana" Subject: Message 11 February 21 2002, 13:35 67 deg 47.28 S lat 68 deg 31.26 W long (Woodfield Channel, off SE tip of Adelaide) Air surface temperature: 2.6 degrees C Sea Surface Temperature (SST): 0.2 degrees C Wind speed: 5 knots, 140 degrees Air pressure: 976.8 mBar Hi! A lot of things have changed since my last message. We ran away from the storm we were in - the wind and the seas were a bit much for us. We hid behind Adelaide Island and have spent past couple of days going through the passages between all the islands here in search of whales. We have two International Whaling Commission observers on the ship with us: Deb (Thiele) and Rebecca (Pirzl). The IWC is cooperating with the GLOBEC program on these trips so their observers and our group try to gather complimentary information on the distribution of whales in this part of the world. The whale observers stay on a lookout for whales (as well as other marine mammals and birds) while we're on transect lines and log all sightings onto a computer thats linked with ship's GPS and thus has current position, and other relevant info. Some people tend to confuse this process with whale watching. The 2 are quite different, whale watching being a tourist activity while whale observations have an entire scientific methodology behind them that is followed by the observers. This time of the year it is a difficult job since there is a watch usually during all daylight hours, which right now seems to be from about 5 am till about 11 pm. If we see any large whales (e.g. humpbacks, groups of minkes, killer whales) during dedicated marine mammal survey times a zodiac gets launched and tries to approach the animal(s). First, pictures of dorsal fins and flukes are taken (for identification purposes) and then a biopsy is attempted. A biopsy implies taking a skin and blubber sample from the whale. This is done with a crossbow and a biopsy dart - an arrow with a hollow tip which sticks into the whale and takes out a little chunk of its skin and blubber (1-2 cm long and about 4 mm around). The dart is made in such a way that it pops out of the whale and it is positivly buoyant so it can be retreived from the surface. The skin is used for genetic analysis and blubber is examined for toxins. In the last couple of days we've seen several minkes and 4 pairs of humpbacks. The zodiac got launched twice on the humpbacks, but there was no luck in getting any pictures or biopsy samples. It seemed that as soon as the zodiac got close enough to the animals they would stop surfacing and disappear from our sight. So, due to the lack of whale pictures, I decided to sneak in a picture of myself. (Not quite as big as a whale, but working on it. With all the desserts the cooks make on the ship, it shouldn't take too long! :-)) Behind me is the snow covered Adelaide Island. I wanted you to see the kind of the scenery we've had to "put up with" in the last couple of days. Right now we're on our way out of the sheltered waters, though. We're peaking out to see if the conditions are good enough from the deployment of the last WHOI mooring. If they are, that will be the order of business for this afternoon. Then tomorrow we will drag for the missing WHOI mooring, and after that we will resume with the marine mammal survey. But I am going ahead of myself... I have become aware of a couple of errors that have snuck out in my previous messages. For example, when I wrote that our instruments ascend in the water column at a speed of 40 m/s, I was failing to pay attention to my units and I wanted to write m/min! (Which makes it a much more reasonable rate! It get's tricky when you get used to thinking in SI units all the time!) The other mistake, or misunderstanding on my part, was the cause of the apparent failure of Breck's floats. There was no software issues but the problem seems to be that the satellites don't come far enough south to see the floats when they come to surface, as most earth orbiting satellites tend to stay away from the poles and keep closer to lower latitudes. In hope I will make fewer mistakes in the future, I sign off! Ana