I did see a real whale during my marine mammal watch today at 2:00 in the afternoon. I believe it was a humpback whale because of its humped dorsal fin and fluke shaped body. It was first spotted by one of the mates in front of the boat, and then I saw it when it swam past the starboard (right) side of the ship. I got a really good view because the whale came up for air and showed his entire back, it was so cool! The whale then came around the back of the boat and followed us for a while. We were collecting seismic data during this time, so we shut down the data collecting instruments until the whale got bored with us and moved on. Everybody on board the ship was very excited to see our first whale-so AWESOME!
About 40 minutes after our last whale sighting, we put the seismic equipment back into the water and started collecting data again. The data images are really interesting because they show the seafloor along with any sediment that sits on top of the rock.
You can see the first layer is the rock of the seafloor and the second layer is the sediment covering.
The other very interesting part of today was an excellent presentation given by Rhian, a biologist from the University of Hawaii, on her research with deep- water corals. Here are a couple of WOW facts. • There are over 3,000 species of corals. • At 2,500 meters reef-building corals stop and only individual corals exist. • The environment best for deep-water corals is a surface with a hard bottom, a high flow/ current, and nutrient rich water.
I really enjoy continuing to learn so much new information!