Position at
0100" 27 37.5N 085 18.1W.
We reached the 200 meter isobath at around 10 a.m.
and streamed the short hydrophone. Much of the morning was spent in not
entirely successful attempts to solve electrical noise problems that
were not apparent during our brief trials off St. Petersburg. Although we
are using the same boat as last year, some changes have been made, and
there are signs that maintenance has not been all that it might have
been, so that a system that worked perfectly last year seems now to be
hexed by earthly problems. Such are the trials and tribulations of
trying to run sensitive electronic equipment on a boat taken out of a
charter fleet and hurriedly adapted.
We have been making one-minute listening stations
every 15 minutes through the day but haven’t heard any whales. This is
not entirely unexpected, this first section along the Floridian coast is
an area where in the past we have only encountered occasional small
clusters of medium sized males. The absence of any sperm whales has at
least provided space to train our new crew members in using Logger and
in what to expect once we encounter sperm whales. The day was not
without any marine mammal sightings: pantropical spotted dolphins paid
us a couple of visits through the morning.
We are now zig-zagging through our southernmost
search area, staying in water between 500 and 2000 meters.
Photo-id Team