The good, the bad and the broken.

There was another choppy day on the water had by all yesterday. It seems the whales show up when conditions are less than ideal. We got onto a single animal yesterday morning with regular down times but with quick surfacing. As we concurred that we had not sampled this animal before, we tried  following it closely. But unfortunately the whale got the better of us and sneaked away south.

Then, there was a breacher in the distance that we attempted to track. However, it also eluded us after the weather deteriorated to an even worse state. We were soaked head to toe by the time we started to head for port. It wasn’t all bad. On the way home, we were joined by approx. five rough tooted dolphins. A nice addition to the cetacean species list.

A better weather day today did not translate to better sightings/ biopsies. Only one whale was spotted and we had already biopsied ‘Pat the singer’ this year and last year. So we decided to leave the poor fella alone this time. A bit of a hic cup with the cross-bow this morning meant we had to come in early. After myself and Simon worked on it for the afternoon, we have mended it (hopefully!) and ready for action again. We took a trip out to give it a trial run, but of course there were no whales to test it on.