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So I'm back from my trip, the pilot study is complete. I had the most amazing time and met some really great people.
I actually settled into living on a boat really well. I almost prefer it to dry land, that constant rocking is quite relaxing (most of the time).
You quickly adapt to sea legs and working and cooking while everything is moving around. Non slip mats are a god send!

The conditions weren't the best. We had a lot of wind and some rough swells which made trying to spot whales incredibly difficult.
So we were mainly looking for competitive pods. This is generally a single female, who may or may not have a calf, and a group of males all vying for her attention.
We were after these pods so we could record the social vocalisations. It was really cool to hear males singing and all their chatter right when it was happening a few meters away from us.

We worked every day, so we didn't really get a lot of down time but that was barely noticed and didn't matter as the conditions weren't safe enough to go snorkeling or swimming. But we did go ashore a few times, we stopped at Whitehaven beach which is known for its pure white silica sand. We also went to Scawfell Island and Penrith Island which are continental islands off Queensland in the Great Barrier Reef.
We went for a quick ride around one of the reefs in one of our small tenders. It was amazing to see all the coral and giant clams and blue sea stars and green sea turtles.

I have too many pictures to choose from so I'm just going to share a couple.


This picture doesn't do it justice, but the water up there is unlike anything I've seen. It is so so blue and clear and just beautiful. This is only a very small part of Scawfell Island.



A photo taken for dorsal identification. There's remarkable variation in each whales dorsal fin. The underside of the whales fluke is also used for identification as each has a unique pattern.



And that's some of us on our main research tender. To spot whales we'd have spotters on top of the main boat who would look for a "blow" like in this picture or other behaviours like breaching or slapping and then direct the tender to the area of the whale. Sometimes it got a bit hectic when we'd have different whales all around, on a good spotting day you could probably see a whale up to 5km away, so you'd have to try and choose which whale you'd be better off going after. And for such big animals they're very easy to lose!

This is fascinating, platy! And thank you for such good pictures. I'm so glad to hear you had a great trip, and did some valuable research work.

I never knew before that a Whale's dorsal fin was so unique to each individual! Like our faces, or our fingerprints.

That beach (1st pic) is so beautiful. I think I'll pitch a Yurt and live there! LOL (until the tide decides to come in with a force 8 storm anyway! haha Then you wouldn't see me for dust.)
But seriously, what a beautiful place.

You can actually camp there, though I'm not sure many people do as it's only accessible by boat and most people just live on their boat like we did since they're fully equipped.
One of the guys actually climbed to the very top of the island as we were trying to scout good land based observation points. It took him all day and he said it was just really thick bush and large rocky outcrops the whole way. So not ideal for hiking.
But it's like a different world out there. I would love to go back.

Those are amazing pictures. It is all so beautiful and you got really close to the whales. You saw a lot of interesting marine life. I would love to see turtles swimming and of course the whales. It is great that you got to go on the trip. What an incredible experience.

Living on a boat does have some advantages. Everything you need is with you and you can go where you please. Some people do live on a boat and they love it. You can see why.

So how did the whale research go? Did you get good recordings. It will be interesting to hear what conclusions come from the project. Did you see a lot of whales. The whales look like they don't mind humans. Are they tame, fearless or just disinterested.

Scafell Island is pretty, but it does look rugged. Does anyone live there? It looks pretty deserted.

I absolutely loved living on a boat out at sea. What made it so easy was that everyone was great to live with, there were no clashes of personality and even though there were 11 of us on a small boat you could still get space and time to yourself. It was a good break from reality.

For a short stint I think we got some good data. Over 3 weeks we got about 35 samples to analyse. Each sample is halved and half goes to the project and the other half goes to the Australian Antarctic Division to do their analysis. Recordings were more difficult because of the conditions. So different ways to approach recordings were being hashed out for next year. But their calls are so loud we could hear them through the hydrophone when they were about 1km away.
Considering I'd only seen a whale once in my life before this, to me I did see a lot of whales! Within hours of leaving port we found a mother and calf. And we'd often see big, continuous breaches from far off in the distance.

They're certainly not tame. Mothers and calves are often very slow moving, because you know the baby has to feed and continually go to the surface and what not. So sometimes, particularly if the calf was younger, they were a bit more curious and perhaps a bit more relaxed. We'd get calves spy hopping and doing little breaches around us, which was totally adorable.
Some of the adults didn't want anything to do with us, and while we're trying to follow them they're constantly changing direction so we'd just have to give up and let them go.
As opposed to a competitive pod where they're so focused on each other and trying to get the female they'd take no notice of us. At one point we were actually IN a pod of 5 whales and they're swimming all around us and going under the boat, huge thrill to be so close to them.

Definitely rugged. No one lives on any of the islands.






Scawfell Island again. Yes the water is actually that colour. Amazing

The colour of the water is incredible. No wonder you loved being there. It would be special to be with a group like that. You all have a strong interest in what you are doing. There must have been some really interesting conversations.

You got quite a bit of data. I wonder what results will come from analyzing it. In many ways we know so little about whales. There is so much to learn.

Seeing mothers and calves was really lucky. I wonder if the calves thought it was interesting to see you. From your description I sense that the whales have different personalities. Some were interested and some wanted to be left  alone. Being in the whale pod was worth the whole trip. What an experience you had.   The whole  trip sounds like it was filled with wonderful animal encounters. Not too many people ever get that close to a whale. You were actually in the middle of a pod. WOW!

Thank-you for posting the beautiful pictures and sharing your experiences with us.