Journal of a Sabbatical

February 5, 2000

little shearwater

Position:

Scotia Sea
53-04 S
044-11 W

Today's Bird Sightings:
wandering albatross
black-browed albatross
gray-headed albatross
giant petrel
soft-plumaged petrel
Antarctic prion
white-chinned petrel
greater shearwater
little shearwater
Wilson's storm petrel
common diving petrel
brown skua

Mammal Sightings:
fin whale
humpback whale
orca
hourglass dolphin (seen by others but not me - darn missed it again)

Today's Reading: The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin

Explorer Ship's Log Entry

Good sleeping weather last night. Nice calm seas to rock me to sleep instead of throw me out of bed. The intensive two days at South Georgia felt like a week. Now it's on to the Falklands. We had some thick fog last night and this morning but that doesn't exactly count as bad weather if the ship is not pitching and rolling. It's a delight to have smooth seas for this crossing.

I find myself getting a little depressed. Is it because I know the end of the trip is coming? Am I just feeling a letdown after the intensity of South Georgia?

I spent some time up on the pool deck trying to photograph black-browed albatrosses and giant petrels, which were coming really close and just hanging over the ship as if they were really curious about us. [The sketch above is based on one of my giant petrel photos - the miracle of Photoshop.] A small pod of orcas, three of them to be exact, broke the surface just off to starboard. The male is huge.

Today's lectures to keep us from going nuts at sea:

Greg Lasley on VENT's Churchill trips. He talked about summer tours for the birds that breed up there on the taiga and tundra and fall trips for polar bears up close. He had great slides.

Carl Safina, the guy we picked up at King George Island, Antarctica, in the middle of the night, talked about his book, Song for the Blue Ocean, which I read last year, and his personal experiences of his travel and research at sea. I listened to this talk on the sound system in my cabin as a wave of fatigue came over me. I am already aware of a lot of what he had to say about the appalling state of the world's fisheries, one of my pet peeves. So I kind of had that preaching to the choir feeling, but it was worth hearing again.

Kevin Clement, the literary member of the staff, did the multimedia thing on ice in literature that he has promised at the beginning of the trip. I'd actually been looking forward to this. He did readings from explorers and poets on the ways that ice has been interpreted and understood by those who have experienced the ice and tried to survive it, as well as ice as a metaphor. Naturally he read from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: "The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around..."

Kevin's talk was also notable for being interrupted by Victor who announced the sighting of a little shearwater off the stern. Nearly everybody got up and headed for the stern. The little shearwater followed the ship for awhile giving everybody a chance for a good look. A couple of people were actually elbowing each other for a better view! I guess it's a real good bird.

It was a productive birding afternoon with our first greater shearwaters, and plenty of soft-plumaged petrels, as well as the little shearwater.

I looked for stars again tonight on deck but it had gotten cloudy so I still haven't seen the Southern Cross.