Song of the Whale Diary: 20th - 23rd July

Sunday 20th July
Written by Marina
It is a good weather day. Some animals are seen: some bottlenose, spotted and striped dolphins and also sperm whales. For us the volunteers it is our first full day onboard - at least for me it is interesting - well, maybe waking up in the middle of the night cannot be called interesting for everybody - but this kind of thing is the 'inconvenience' of studying cetaceans! Anyway, I haven’t seen such a nice moon in a long time - the night is really clear, and we see for a moment a couple of dolphins really near the boat, it seems as if we could almost touch them by hand! After our night watch we can sleep till morning - our beds move like nests, and you can feel the water running just on the other side of the wall - both are strange sensations, something like being inside something alive. Last night, Ana made the dinner - cooking a mountain of vegetables and couscous. I can see that the sea makes everyone really hungry because the food disappears quickly! So maybe making dinner for such a hungry team is not as easy as I thought!  

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Monday 21st July
Written by Tris
Departing the interesting seamounts off Santa Maria, the boat turns east along the far end of the Azores Fracture Zone. The weather is indifferent with a persistent north-easterly breeze making sailing a little frustrating. The waves kick up a bit which, along with the swell, makes for difficult observation conditions. A half-eaten packet of crisps are discovered in the lazarette under mysterious circumstances, but once on deck, the crisps soon disappear! Nienke raises morale considerably with an excellent Dutch winter repast for dinner.  

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Tuesday 22nd July
Written by Astrid
While continuing our journey towards Lisbon, we see a whale just for a split second. We think it’s a minke whale or a beaked whale, but to be sure we would like to have another opportunity to see the animal again, and therefore we stop the boat and start drifting. Next time the animal surfaces, it’s too far away in the glare of the sun to identify the species. We wait for a little more, but the animal is not seen again. We follow our travel route, which will bring us closer towards the Josephine seamounts (although still two days away). In the afternoon we hear sperm whales very loudly on the hydrophone, and we decide to try to get photos of the flukes. We manage to photograph one big individual, while we are surrounded by other blows further away. During the night watch, a mysterious ship is heard. Clear sounds of a propeller are audible through the headphones, but no ship is seen on the radar, via the AIS signal, or picked up via other acoustic signs (e.g. sonar). Is our ghost ship a submarine……?

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Wednesday 23rd July
Written by Ana
In the morning, although the sea is very good for sightings, we only see a group of dolphins and a couple of turtles. The day continues quietly. We try to sail for a while but the wind doesn't help and we give up. Maybe tomorrow when we get to the seamounts, our luck will change. The day ends with a beautiful sunset on the horizon. During the night a ship appears on the radar and, as we haven’t seen one in days, it is the highlight of my night watch!   

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