“Are you ready to have the greatest experience of your life?”
It's 6am on a Sunday morning and our team is gathered on the bridge of the LMG. None of us have had coffee yet, but we grin at Ari's dramatization of the moment. It's finally go time.
He shows us our exact location on the radar map and reviews the plan for the day. “We’ll follow the 3-2-1 rule,” Ari says. “If there are at least three pairs within a one-mile radius, we’ll put a zodiac in the water.”
We divide into teams to look out for whales from the bridge. KC and Emma take the first watch, using the iPads to log a couple humpbacks sightings spread out over several miles. Dave Johnston and I take the next shift. We don’t see much for 10 minutes, then I spot three humpbacks hanging out about 200 yards from the port side of the ship. A minute later, Dave peers through binoculars to see blow holes erupting in the distance.
Keeping the binoculars pressed tight to his eyes, he asks, “what’s the number for the Chief Scientist cabin?” George gives him the number. When Dave gets Ari on the phone, he says, “we’ve got a big group of animals—you should come up here.”
Ari appears on the bridge less than a minute later. He looks through the binoculars, nods, and says, “Let’s do it.”
Twenty minutes later, Ari, Jeremy and Emma load into the Solas and head towards the group off the bow. Dave tells me to keep eyes on the group on the port side.
And so begins our field work—over the next week, we need to tag as many whales as possible.
When we arrive in Andvord Bay that evening, the plan is to spend a day or two there. But it turns out to be a magic spot and we end up staying for much longer.
Julia Carleton drives the Solas while Ari Friedlaender prepares to photograph a tagged minke whale.
The days begin to run together - a routine blur of pulling on layers and bulky float coats, stuffing hand warmers in our pockets, grabbing equipment, and stepping gingerly down the rope ladder into the Zodiac. We spend hours on the water, searching for a sleek, gray dorsal fin cutting across the surface (a minke whale) or a bright piece of plastic bobbing up and down (a tag). When we return to the ship, we dump wet, salty gear on the lab tables, upload photos and video files, charge batteries, then head to the galley for a much-needed hot meal.
After months and months of planning, and weeks of transit, it feels good to finally get to work. The eight people on our team, plus the marine technicians and the LMG crew, work together seamlessly, and I find it invigorating to document how all the pieces come together - the easy radio communications between the bridge and the back deck and the boats, the joy of the marine technicians when they see whales up close, and the tangible excitement of the PhD students on board.
When Dave Cade uploads the data from the first minke tag, he slams his fist on the desk and yells out a victorious "YES!" As KC scrolls through all his drone images of minke whales, his eyes lights up. "Look at the way these markings near the blow hole curve to the left," he says. "They all do that!"
This aerial image shows the unique markings near the blow hole a minke whale | Photo by KC Bierlich
By day seven, we are tired but triumphant. In addition to 11 humpbacks, Ari has tagged nine minke whales, Dave Johnston and KC have completed 26 drone flights, and the fish-finding wizards (Chris Taylor and Dave Cade) have prey-mapped over 100 square nautical miles of Andvord Bay.
On the second to last day, KC and I stand on the bridge. He peers through binoculars searching for a tag, while I check to make sure the plastic rain sleeve is wrapped securely around my camera. The weather today is stereotypical of the Antarctic Peninsula - cold and wet - but as usual, our spirits are high. We've been talking about music for the past hour.
When KC hands me the binoculars, he says "it's pretty cool you know how to find whales now. That's a skill you'll have for the rest of your life."
"You're right," I say, thinking back to the beginning of the trip. "I hadn't thought about that."
On the first day of field work, I could only accurately identify whales close to the boat. But after eight straight days immersed in marine biology at the bottom of the world, I can spot a minke from over a mile away.
A minke whale surfaces in Andvord Bay.
Check out the rest of The Pago Files: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, and Part Five
To learn more about what I'm doing in Antarctica, visit In Search of Minkes and follow #insearchofminkes on social media. To see more photos, head over to Instagram and Twitter.
Curious about the blog title? A pagophile is any living organism that thrives in ice. Pago is a word of Greek origin, meaning cold, frost, freezing; fixed or hardened.