Award-winning, non-profit and ethical wildlife conservation volunteering. Advancing citizen science and conservation since 1999 – for nature, not profit.
Today’s “catch” was 17 harbour porpoises and two seals. We’ve had some rough conditions, but nobody was sick. We’ve also had some excellent brownies for “second breakfast” and a great Thai dinner. We’ve come into Craobh Haven for the night to shelter from the strong winds. Tomorrow we’re heading south towards the island of Islay and will see what the weather brings. Videos below
Team 1 has arrived safely and we have had our first 24 hours on the research vessel. Yesterday we had introducations and some safety briefings before going for a last shop and turning into our bunks pretty late, although still light at almost 23:00.
Today we’ve had our science training in the morning and our first survey run. It’s been dry, but overcast, but some bad weather is moving in, so for now we are staying in some sheltered lochs.
Our first sighting today was a harbour porpoise and everyone has been busy switching stations: observer, data relayer, data recorder, listener, etc. We’ve also had our first lunch out of cups on the run/survey.
No more videos for now as we snatch the odd patch of GSM coverage to get this to you. So here are a few pictures from our first 24 hours as we are sailing by Duart Castle.
Yesterday we arrived at Tobermory on Mull and we have brought the rain with us! Stuart the skipper tells us it has been glorious weather for the last week, but it will now be unsettled for a few days. Saturday is forecast to be the worst with high winds, so Stuart has planned a route that will take us into a sheltered loch to hide from the worst of it; better weather is forecast after the weekend..
Preparation: The research yacht is all fuelled up and the crew have been busy loading on all our food for the expedition – as you can see below
All ready for group 1!
Weather:
18 deg C, overcast during the day, positively beautiful in the evening, no rain! Forecast not so good – see http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2635754. Looks like we’ll be feeding the fish with lots of wind an wave action. And the midges are flying high.
Preparation:
The boat is coming in from a research outing as we speak. This year’s first basking sharks sighted.
Video update:
See you Wednesday, och aye – innit?
Here’s now Kate’s welcome.
As you can tell, Kate’s not too comfortable in front of the camera, so we have also added a video of someone who is VERY comfortable, in fact could probably not survive for longer than 48 seconds without a camera lens being pointed at them, to the blog.
You must watch this extremely interesting video of utter relevance to the future of our planet until the end and expect to be tested during the expedition. Or you could watch http://youtu.be/pGifZhozLVA and really learn something.
4 June
Hello everyone and welcome to the Scotland diary. This is just a quick prologue with a video message from the big cheese below
More admin and an emergency mobile phone number in the next diary entry, which will hopefully also contain a message from your expedition leader Kate.
We hope your preparations are going well and we look forward to seeing you in Scotland, laddies and lassies!
We have added quite a few more photos of our 2013 expedition below and to www.facebook.com/biosphere.expeditions1 | https://plus.google.com/103347005009999707934/ | http://pinterest.com/biosphereexped/. Thank you to Wouter Kingma (www.wouterkingma.com) for providing the bulk of them. Come and join us again in January 2014 if you can!
Team two went home today, and unfortunately the weather did not cooperate with us during the final days and we did not go out to sea. The team did, however, get a chance to see common dolphins in the harbour yesterday when they took the ferry to Pico. Being good expedition members they even collected all the POPA data (except for a water temperature) “just in case”.
Many thanks to all the team members from both groups who kept their spirits up despite the challenges the weather threw at us this year. I know it was disappointing not to go out to sea every day that that we were scheduled to, but hopefully you made the best of your time here in the Azores and go home with fond memories of the group. Your legacy is in the details, so to speak, and with so much data entry from all of you we have quite caught up with all the data that has accummulated over the course of past expeditions. Thank you!
I’d also like to thank Buff for donating Buffs to keep us warm and dry, and Swarovski Optik for our new snazzy binoculars.
I hope to see you again on another expedition, some time, some place. Safe travels everyone and thank you again for your support.
Alisa Clickenger
Expedition leader
Finally we’ve had a “calm” day in which we are able to use our new Swarovski Optik binoculars. We’ve been keen to try them, and yesterday the sea and wind cooperated leaving expeditioners with a free hand to hold them!
Just in time, too; Sabine spotted a 40 cm sea turtle.
Although we didn’t see any whales yesterday, we received terrific news. Our scientist Lisa has only seen a handful of humpback whales off the shores of the Azores in the twenty years she’s been conducting research here, but just yesterday she received word of a match. A humpback whale seen here in the Azores in 2006 has just been identified in the Cape Verde Islands. This is only the third such match she’s made.
Other matches this season include two out of the 19 whales identified on Tuesday. 2350 was first seen in 1999, then again in 2008 & 2009. The other was seen in October of 2010 and this year she had a 2 year old calf with her! The photos below are 2350 as seen in 1999 & yesterday.
Such matches are very important as accurate knowledge of the origins of the baleen whales passing the Azores archipelago during April and May will help to determine which stocks they come from and assess more accurately their true numbers (which are often inflated in efforts to set or reintroduce hunting quotas).
On Thursday our searching was not in vain either, through some choppy seas. We found a group of bottlenose dolphin that actually appeared to be enjoying the waves! They were surfing! It was the main resident group that we tend to see often around Faial & Pico.
Update from our volunteer vacation / conservation holiday protecting whales, dolphins and turtles around the Azores archipelago
Biosphere Expeditions: blogs from the frontline of wildlife conservation and the fight for a more sustainable planet 