Whales in Potter Cove... Video profiles... Christmas... Farewells, or not...
Last week we were able to work five days in a row. Every day the video recordings improved a little bit more and at the end of the week, we managed to drive the first video profiles from approximately 90 m to 3 m depth.
One really cold and early morning, it was Thursday I think, we spotted a humpback whale with its cub in the cove. During the whole trip it remained difficult to decide whether to look on the sea floor and its diversity or to look at the whales, when they came up to the water surface in order to breath.
Spending Christmas on the base was a really nice experience, but very different from the Christmases I usually spend at home. It also gave me the time to relax and process some of the data – on Friday evening we held a talk about our work for the people from the base in order to let them know what kind of work we are doing here. On Christmas Eve after a nice dinner and giving out the presents we brought from Germany, we had a party in the ‘cinema’ that was turned into a bar just a few days ago.
Two days later, on December 26th, Ilona and Jule from the University of Hamburg were supposed to leave Jubany with 15 other people from the base to fly to Buenos Aires and then back to Germany. They left on Wednesday evening for the first time – since then they have been going back and forth between the base, the argentine ship and Frei. The airplane already left twice from Rio Gallegos, a small city in the South of Argentina, but had to turn around due to bad weather conditions. At the moment, we are all sitting in the kitchen and waiting for the airplane to finally arrive. It looks like that we might also spend New Years together.
I wish everybody a Happy New Year – ein Frohes Neues Jahr – Feliz Año Nuevo! I hope you all are having a great evening and a good start into 2012!