Whale Songs’ Fremantle Departure (Saturday 19 January 2013)

By Micheline Jenner on January 19, 2013 in Whale Tales: Micheline’s Blog

The Southern Australian Acoustic Profile Research Team.
Photo credit D. Peterson

What’s Happening?

Just to let you know the activities surrounding our departure have gathered considerable momentum… The final preparations for our 4000 km jaunt reached fever pitch on Friday 18 January, while loading sono-buoys and bags of fresh fruit and veggies.

Four or five crew at a time have loaded and staggered down the jetty with multiple wheel-barrows and trolleys full of assorted supplies and necessaries bursting from our internationally collected cloth grocery bags including jars of pasta sauce by the dozen, 30 litres of UHT full cream milk, 8 bottles of soy sauce, 20 kgs of long-grain white rice (our Whale Song staple), 20 cans of diced tomatoes, 24 chocolate bars, 30 packets of chips and all the accoutrements of sweet chilli sauce, mango chutney, hot salsa, capers and jalapeno peppers that go with our international “At Sea” fare. As well, lucky for us, Tasmin, our Dessert Chef, has made sure we have all the fixings for all her specialities including Underway-Crème Brulee, special delicate Madeira cake and Made-With-Love Baklava. So we have food, fuel and water supplies –Whale Song is ready to go, what are we up to?

After a good nights rest, Whale Song’s crew were ready to get going and with great excitement at 0936 am this morning Saturday 19 January, 2013 we let our lines go departing from our pen in the Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour!

While leaving the harbour the ST (Scream Team), as assembled by Sam’s mum, (MOD =Mother of Deck-hand) the leader of the EMDC (Embarrassing Mum Departure Committee) was suitably noisy and visual with squeals and waving colourful sarongs from the rocks of South Mole including both Sam and Inday’s family members! It is lovely to have such an enthusiastic departure and welcoming team, many thanks!

The Fremantle Scream Team seeing us depart Fremantle
Photo credit M.Jenner

What is on the Agenda?

It is the summer of 2013 and Whale Song and her crew of 12 are embarking on a re-positioning voyage from Fremantle across the Great Australian Bite to Jervis Bay in NSW for work with the Australian Defence Department. En route, we will conduct the SAAP (Southern Australian Acoustic Profile Summer 2013) transiting along the 100 metre contour line determining what this depth of water sounds like. Using the specialised acoustic equipment placed on board by the Australian Defence Department, we will record the sounds of the 100 metre line making acoustic recordings and visual observations all the way from Fremantle to Sydney deploying the acoustic sono-buoys every three hours allowing near 24 hour monitoring.

How can you follow us?

Of our transit, I will post blogs on our website at www.cwr.org.au which has been re-vamped and re-launched with lots of new material. From the Home Page, look under “Latest Posts” and “Whale Tales”, also the Latest Posts will appear on the right side of the Home Page, detailing current updates and news of our activities and the species of cetaceans we have encountered. Please feel free to check out our new website and follow my blogs and our stories at “Whale Tales”.

We will update the website with a short daily post, as mentioned in “Whale Tales” including select images, so you can see many aspects of our journey.

What did we see first?

Well, just out of the harbour in the channel heading south towards Garden Island we had 7 common bottlenose dolphins bow-riding Whale Song! Skipper was beside himself with pleasure barking like crazy and of course, all the on board cameras were whirring away! What a wonderful marine mammal send-off from land and welcome to the sea! Now as we prepare for visual observations, we snack on Inday’s mum’s (Rose’s) delicious home-made torta.