Observing whales on the way south

After a delayed departure, we are rapidly heading towards the Drake Passage and into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to reach our measurement area. The captain is giving his best and keeps a velocity of 9-10kn (instead of the 8kn that we expected). Maybe we’ll catch up! You can follow our track at http://havstraum.no/dml where you can also see our stations and satellite images.

Until we are at the first station, people are preparing their labs and observations are going on. The observers have the best spot on the ship and get a lot of company up there. We have already seen a lot of birds, whales, dolphins, penguins etc!

It is difficult to take good pictures of the whales and dolphins, because they only show up very shortly. The shaking ship doesn’t really help either…But here I got a sei whale in front of the lens! I hope there will be better pictures coming.
Spotting birds and whales