Armchair Travel Day 6 (Feb 05, 2016)
The latest issue of Australian Geographic (Jan-Feb 2016), as per usual, is bursting with interesting pieces on our beautiful Australian wildlife, unusual photography assignments and a dazzling array of extremely successful AG-funded expeditions. Given a moment or two in the evening, I have easily curled up in an armchair to take a ride across Australia and around the world from the comfort of our main salon.
Blue Sky! Cloud finally let the blue through for at least an hour this afternoon. One couldn’t have too much blue sky. I fear we might be greedy, calm sea and blue sky too!
I taste the grit of the Gobi Desert in my teeth as I read John Pickrell’s article on Mongolian dinosaur fossil hunting, as the wind whips their camp at the dig site. On deck, John and I chat about the similarities of our chosen disciplines. Pains-taking, back-breaking work, requiring attention to detail is necessary to unearth significant dinosaur finds. These requirements parallel hour upon hour spent searching open water, seeking “different” wave patterns that could by chance reveal all manner of cetaceans visiting the surface for mere moments. And that is just the looking, monitoring the acoustic array 24 hours each day is also on the cards, but-we have to run the ship in the first place, to even be in a position to look and listen. We love it, but indeed there are things to be done to make this research work.
Where Are They? Another sighting of a possible Beaked whale had our eyes glued to the sea between the boat and the horizon.
The fossils are there, in selected regions, often becoming variously exposed with varying forces of erosion. These clues need to be carefully searched for, and just as carefully uncovered-they don’t always reveal themselves entirely… So too, in selected regions, whales and dolphins are present. Varying temporal and spatial scales influence their distribution but again, careful attention in differing weather conditions is required to see blows or glimpses of bodies or hear clicks and whistles, which also increases our chances of encounter.
Waterfalls of Light. Ah, evenings at sea!
Patience, deliberation, determination, concentration and passion, all mix to make marine mammal projects succeed. Whale research – studying animals that spend less than 10% of their lives at the surface, can be tricky, very tricky. By adding the acoustic detections we have increased our chances of sighting cetaceans but there is still a whole lotta ocean out there! We have 75% more chance of hearing a cetacean than seeing it… wow!
Howling at the Sun. Why not?
Happily listening to dolphin whistles filling the wheelhouse!
Mich
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