Crossing the Drake Passage
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All work is performed under NMFS Permit No. 23095 with the Biotelemetry and Behavioral Ecology Lab at UC Santa Cruz (and all images taken in accordance with that permit).
We finally made it to the Western Antarctic Peninsula! Our arrival was preceded by two long, but beautiful, sea days on the Drake Passage. This is known to be one of the roughest ocean crossings in the world, but we must’ve lucked out – the waves weren’t nearly as high as we were expecting. On our second evening, the sky absolutely lit up with the most glow, perfectly backlighting the blows of humpback and fin whales surfacing in every direction around the boat. It was like being in a dream!
It’s also great being back on the Roald Amundsen, the Hurtigruten ship I was able to travel to Alaska with last year. I recognize many of the crew, and those I hadn’t met before are all very welcoming and accomodating. As guest scientists, Blake and I have a foot in both worlds – we are technically guests on the ship, but we also work with the expedition team to coordinate lectures and ensure guests have access to us, our research, and informational lectures about what we’re working on. We haven’t given a lecture yet, but we have had a few informal sessions where people came to check out the drone we’re using.
We haven’t had a day on the water yet (besides a quick zip around in one of the zodiacs) and are eagerly looking forward to our first day of research. We’re both hoping the weather will be fine enough for us to put the drone in the air. Blake has his biopsy kit ready to go, and if we happen to find a resting whale, I’m going to attempt to run the first of my experiments! It’s all very exciting, and at the same time, the general anxiety buzzes in the background that I won’t be able to do what I’m hoping to do. I guess it’s one of those things where we’ll just have to wait and see.
I’m writing this from the Explorer Lounge on Deck 10, my favorite place to work from because of the sweeping views, flowing coffee, endless nooks to tuck away in, and perfectly mindless background music. Icebergs bob away alongside the boat, lighting up with the remarkable blues and turquoise that mark the refraction of certain wavelengths of light. If there’s any place you can go to process your purpose of being on the planet, this very well might be it. As you’ll see in some of my future work, though, tourism in Antarctica can also be a bit troublesome. It all comes down to your goals and purpose for wanting to come down here.
I’ll report back when we’ve had more time on the water. In the meantime, enjoy these avian photos I snapped – I started a new Antarctic birding hobby!
(Ok, ok, by the time I finally got around to posting this we’ve had two field days and lots of interesting whale interactions. Stay tuned for those stories!).
