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Journals 2008/2009Megan O'Neill
May 22, 2009 More scraping sounds as the boat made its way through the icefloe in Charlotte Bay. Looking out of the window into the darkness with large snowflakes coming down. Visibility was extremely low with the fog, snow and ice all around. Therefore, the survey team was not going to be able to do their part. We noted lots of seals on the ice, but were not able to detect many whales. Meng continued his ADCP (acoustic Doppler Current Profiling) measurements to determine the size/magnitude of the krill beds. The night crew had attempted to collect more CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) samples, but the effort was stunted in the early morning hours when a group of about 10 humpback whales approached the Baltic Room Door each time it opened and they were not able to drop the CTD sampler out! Chase, one of the marine techs, was particularly frustrated because he was on the night shift and was not getting to go out on the Zodiac boats and help with the action of whale tagging during the day. Now the whales were diminishing the one exciting part of night shift! Poor Chance! Having too many whales around is such a problem to have! The snow continued to fall all around and covered the ship. Seeing the fluffy white covering on everything was quite pretty. This may be one of the few Memorial Day weekends I will experience snow! The plan was to make our way through Charlotte Bay and then out into the Gerlache Strait and then back to Palmer Saturday afternoon. The fishing team will go out from Sunday through Wednesday for their final fishing trip. The daylight hours are getting shorter) only about four hours each day and the days left are whittling down, too. I cannot believe how fast it is going by!
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