Mammals!

Last year when we went on a cruise we had a noticeable absence of mammal activity. Yesterday evening we spotted a pod of dolphins and today we were visited by several whales who were curious about the CTD.

The visiting Pod snapped a few quick pics but wasn't able to get out the zoom in time so the zoom is a bit grainy on these.

Our curious whale for the day. His pod mates hung out on the horizon all day. After reviewing some literature on board we have deduced they were probably fin whales.

Our diel started yesterday and was called off when we lost the area of water we were tracking because of differential surface and subsurface currents. It was frustrating to get ten hours into a diel and have to abort, but the current one is going smoothly and will finish up in about 9 hours at 6 am.