For the past week we have been studying the weather waiting for the wind to drop so we can get stuck into the whale survey. To do the survey we must have a sea state of 3 or less (smooth sea with scattered whitecaps) and the forecast for the weekend looked like we might just be in luck! The survey needs to be conducted between 0800 - 1200 from seven different points around the island, the majority of us had a bit of a walk to get into position so we all set off on Saturday afternoon to get to our sites and enjoy a night under the stars with everyone tuning in at 1900 for a few games of radio bingo!
The view from the hammock
(my bed for the night)
The next morning we all held our breath as we waited for Nichy to make the big decision based on all our reports of the sea state at their sites, it was a goer! Though at some sites only just! All morning I had whales popping up all over the show in my sector, the idea was to follow each group and hand it over when they entered a neighbours field of vision, it worked well but got really confusing when you were following four or five groups at once!
My field of vision for the survey,
well most of it!
The whales were on top form with breaching and tail slapping galore, the preliminary count is around 114 whales and Nichy spotted a turtle and Mike saw some dolphins!
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