Day 4 Bass Strait Night Light Show Upstaged by Albatross All Around! (Written on Feb 19, 2013)
A perfect half round of Edam cheese hanging in the sky is a welcome view as I begin my watch. Above the sideways-oriented moon, golden-hued streaky clouds appear exactly positioned, like an Asian street market oil painting on black velvet. The moon on the water reaches our hull and while gazing upwards I also notice the dark, dark sky beautifully lit with Orions’ Belt, or “The Pot” pouring the cheese out on the water. Is life imitating art? Within minutes the sky is totally clouded and lightning fills the sky and brightens inside the wheelhouse.
Just ahead and positioned at around 11 o’clock Cape Farewell flashes, this light is on the north side of King Island, 21.5nm away on a bearing of 246 degrees and 52 nm SE of Cape Otway. It would be fun to stop in for scones and cream at King Island, simply due to their world famous King Island cream and cheese products from over 50 farms on the island.
Lightning has been lighting the darkened sky most of this watch and now with a squall of 40 knots from the WSW the 6 nm RADAR and the 24 nm RADAR are alive with gorgeous, technicolour patterns worthy of t-shirt status and certainly photos! At 0215 I go down to check on sounds in the main saloon, the wind is picking up and things are protesting. The odd cup left in the drying rack rattles against a plate… hmm, they need putting away. I hear Skipper running around, he’s looking for me and when we come back up the stairs again into the wheelhouse, Curt is checking the chart on the nav computer and looking at our options to get out of the wind. The Cape Farewell light is at our 10 o’clock position and easily we can make a run for shelter – we decide to and slowly turning Whale Song, the flashing light now more comforting at our 2 o’clock position. As usual, on my watch I find the potholes, even the ditch and the going is rough. Soon we will be crossing that “line of tranquillity” which Curt always promises, but by looking at the chart I can see it will take a while. All good, the travel is fine on our good ship Whale Song, but the issue is, we wish to survey for whales in good weather… this icky weather was not forecast by the BOM…
We drive Whale Song south-east and then parallel to King Island on the eastern side. I bid Dale goodnight and leave him to take us up and down the eastern side of King Island until daylight. As the day dawns, it is still stormy with SSW 25 knots and as we come around the north side of King Island the light flashes bravely as rough, deep blue seas surge near us and my camera expertly catches the light as it rotates! By 0925 we attempt to commence Transect 1 of BUR (Bonney Upwelling Region) at 39 26.9S and 143 47.7E. As we travel through the western area near King Island the wind is still 22-27 knots, not suitable for cetacean surveys so we travel in a NW direction towards the continental shelf edge.
During the day we have at least 5 pods of common dolphins or “common mangoes” as we call them. This is a poor attempt to stop Skipper going mad barking in the wheelhouse when he hears us say the word “dolphins”. At any rate, he has now learnt that this means his friends, “so the dolphins you mean?“ is the expression on his face, as I grab my camera. He has also become trained to respond to the sound of the shutter, so I have to tell him when a rock is the subject of photography, while he is looking around for something moving! His friends have been bow-riding, one pod of just over 100 animals stayed with us for at least 2 ½ hours. They even outlast me! One of the neatest things I have ever seen was around 100 bottlenose dolphins leaping clear of the water in unison! I was videoing at the time and a most unusual weird deep-down yell came out while my mouth was so wide open and my mind blown-away by the power and unity of this pod!
All round us are oil/gas facilities, a fixed oil platform named Thylacine on the chart and a rig-tender towing a jack-up rig passes on our portside. Elsewhere, three other vessels transit or do the 3 knot tending dance. After lunch of hot, steaming bowls of mushroom, leek, potato and celery soup with baguette and special Resty noodles the numbers of albatross slowly increase over the afternoon as we approach the shelf break. A gorgeous sight occurs while dipping our bread in the soup and chatting over the mid-day meal. The lunch-time entertainment gang of dolphins rides the waves next to main saloon. We can see them rising in the waves and leap next to the windows. This makes for interesting video!
By 630pm (1830) and after our delicious roast pork and vegetable evening meal prepared by Resty, the albatross begin to gather in more substantial groupings. Passing near a small, brightly painted green fishing vessel we are surrounded by between 400 and 500 albatross. We’ve reached the shelf break in 200m of water. All the birds ride the wind, expertly ducking and weaving above and over, the waves. Wow, this is beautiful, especially in the soft, setting sun! A spectacular sunset with text-book “God-light” and hundreds of albatross including Shy, Black-browed and Wandering fill two memory cards on my cameras, for 699 and 723 shots… there will need to be some editing…
From the golden light of an albatross wing-beat,
Mich
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