Whales! We've been almost surrounded by whales for most of the day. Apparently, Southern Madagascar is where a lot of female humpback whales come to give birth before heading off to colder, richer feeding grounds, and people have reported seeing humpbacks and their calves around the ship. I think Arrie is going to upload a longer post on his Whale experience in a little while; he's been on his shift break when most of the whale action has been going on.

I've been exceptionally busy with Sean Fennessey today doing CTD stations and frantically taking samples before the next station; as we approached the coast, the CTDs got more and more frequent to the point we were still processing samples (filtering water) when the next one came on board, so there hasn't been much whale-watching for me! We're now a fairly well-oiled machine, and can (pretty much) take this in our stride now!

Pictures courtesy Magne Olsen.
These images have been cropped and edited as the whales were usually quite far away, so they were small in the frame.
Incidentally, you can click on pictures in the blog if you want to see larger versions.