Day Twelve

Hi all,

Sorry it took so long to post yesterday's blog...our internet is not happy the last couple of days. Hopefully I can get this written and uploaded before tomorrow!


I woke up this morning to find the boat stopped, and went above deck to find that we were in Eureka Harbor, waiting to drop Jen off.  We waved and hugged our goodbyes, and she was off at about noon, where somebody was meeting her to drive home.  Lucky for us, she has a replacement, who is conveniently named Jennifer as well!  Jennifer is from the same lab and also seems very nice.  I'll be working with her on net tows as well.

Eureka Harbor Coast Guard station

It took about an hour to get out of Eureka Harbor, and in the meantime, some of us took up the sport of 'deck dancing'.  They even brought out a laptop with old-timey swing and entertained us for about half an hour. It was very fun.

Deck Dancing

Next, we headed south again for our next transect line, north of San Francisco.  A few miles out of the harbor, we were alerted to whales...everywhere.  We watched them for almost an hour and probably saw at least 20.  It looked like several family groups foraging.  Some were clearly humpback whales, but we weren't sure about the others.  The coolest part was when one was less than 50 feet away from the boat.  For a huge whale, that is not a big distance!  I unfortunately got a photo of him a second too early, and therefore he is just barely starting to raise his fluke in the image.  Of course, someone else got a perfect photo!

So close!

It was a really neat morning, especially since the water was especially calm, and the sky was grey with fog setting over the water in the distance.  It made for a very serene whalewatching scene.  We even got to see one repeatedly slap his fin on the water, which is a common humpback activity. Nobody knows why they do it though!

Fluke from afar

The evening was very busy, with 3 CTD casts and collections in 3 hours, but very calm water so it was nice to be on deck.  However, I am very tired between all of the work and excitement of the day!  We are now headed to our last few stations on this line, and should be headed south for San Francisco by tomorrow morning.  Should be pretty cool since we get fairly close to shore!  We aren't going in the actual bay, but maybe I can see Alcatraz from a distance?

Watching for whales

More tomorrow,
Shea