Life on board and our impact on the guests

02/02/2020

This fieldwork conducted in Antarctica has been for me a completely different experience from previous fieldworks I have been involved in. The difference was not because it was Antarctica, and by so it was incredible and speechless, it was just sublime! The difference came from doing fieldwork on a tourist cruise ship. So much comfort there, with my own cabin, always amazing food onboard, huge variety (although a bit less meat and fish would be ideal ;0) ), and the crew was fantastic! It was also new for me to be surrounded by so many tourists/guests while doing fieldwork. In fact, it was a very great opportunity to share some of the scientific knowledge I acquired during many years with them.

 

Vicky, Popi and I, the three of us had the opportunity to give at least one talk regarding the research being conducted on board, but we also provided them with an overview of the research we have been doing within our scientific careers. The interest of guests regarding Popi´s talk about cetaceans’ vocalizations was such that when they ran into Popi, they talked to her through echolocation clicks! How cool is that!  There was no day when no guests stopped us and bombarded us with questions regarding plastic pollution, the effect of sonar sounds on the whales, how do whales sleep. They were so grateful to us and to all the expedition team for showing and transmitting them our passion for the animals and their natural environment, specially Antarctica.

 

In order to quantify the impact we had in the passengers on board with our talks, we did a questionnaire at the beginning of the cruise and we repeated it at the end of it. A total of  76 passengers replied to our questionnaire, this was 25% of the people, which can seem a low number, but considering how busy their schedule was and that the average survey response rate to any survey is about 33%, we were pretty happy with it. The difference in the answers from the early and late questionnaires showed a positive impact on the guests, whose knowledge about the Southern Ocean increased by 60% and with it, their willingness to protect it with small but important changes in their daily live.  The results for the questionnaire show that guests on board learned that there are some species endangered in the Southern Ocean such as blue whales, fin whales, sei whales, Adelie penguins, Emperor penguins, krill and some species of Albatrosses such as the grey headed albatross and the sooty albatross.  Some answers were so specific that you could guess some of them are great fans of David Attenborough and his wildlife programs. They also learned the basics of our research onboard: how through visual observation and posterior specific statistical analysis we estimate the amount of krill predators (i.e., cetaceans, seals, penguins and seabirds) in an area. Knowing an estimate of how many krill predators are in an area is of particular importance in the Southern Ocean to set quotas for krill fisheries, to avoid having an impact on the krill predator’s survival.  Passengers considered that the three major threats for Southern Ocean predators are: 1) extinction of their resources mainly due to krill overfishing, 2) global warming is reducing the sea ice cover and is acidifying the waters thus changing and reducing their habitat and their prey, 3) plastic pollution. A few of the guests answered that tourism is a major threat to the Southern Ocean predators.

 

 

Their experience in Antarctica onboard the Midnatsol, made some guests determined to change some of their daily actions to reduce their effect on the Southern Ocean predators. Willingness have been shown to stop using single-used-plastics, reduce the usage of plastics, learn which products contain krill based and do not consume them, walk and cycle as much as possible instead of driving, eat less meet and fish, be more environmental aware of their impacts and try to reduce them, become an Antarctic ambassador by telling friends and family about what they have learned during their once in a live unique trip.

 

 

We were so pleased to see these answers, as it reflects our and the expedition team positive impact on the guests and consequently on the Southern Ocean.

 

 

Written by Lucía, 02th February 2019

How much krill do whales eat? And why do we need to know this?

Wilhelmina Bay

26/12/2019

Stock assessment models are used to assess the amount of fish that we, humans, could withdraw from the ocean without harming the sustainability of the fishery and the ecosystem that depend on it. In short, stock assessment models contrast the reproductive capacity of the fishery against its mortality rate, that is composed by three main factors: natural mortality, predators and fishing activity. Therefore, in order to set a safe krill catch limit (a.k.a. quota), we need to know how much krill there is, how many predators feed on them and how much krill these predators eat.

On these days in the Southern Ocean, humpback whales were the most seen cetacean species. In fact, here at Wilhelmina bay humpback whales offered us an amazing spectacle in which groups of 4 to 6 humpback whales were constantly lunge feeding at the surface. Wherever you were looking, blows and expanded grooves were seen. If in silence, you could also hear their blows and inhalations, their open mouth breaking the surface to engulf tons of water… What an amazing moment!!! That is what they told me, and I truly believe them, as I had to be on the main ship taking care of my recent knee injury. At least I could see them far away and let my imagination free to experience it… in a different way!

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Date: 26/12/2019

Happy holidays to all readers! I am Victoria, the third observer on board Hurtigruten Midnatsol, together with Popi and Lucía. I am a master student at The Arctic University of Norway, doing my master project as part of this larger collaborative project on distribution of krill-predators in the Southern Ocean. I will analyse and write about the data collected on seabirds in the Scotia Sea this season.

It has been an amazing experience, we have gathered a good amount of data, and I feel like I have learnt so much! Now we are celebrating a different Christmas than we are used to, with penguins and light all night long. I was asked to write a summary of a talk I gave here on board the ship, on whales, seals and seabirds as krill-dependent predators in the Southern Ocean. So here we go.

The Southern Ocean ecosystem is affected by strong seasonal variations in temperature, ice, and light conditions. Winters are cold and dark, and the sea ice doubles the size of the continent. On the contrary, in summers the sea ice retreats, and the almost 24 hour long days make it possible for the phytoplankton to photosynthesize day and night. The amount of light, in combination with the nutrients brought up from the deep sea by upwelling at oceanic fronts and coasts, create excellent conditions for the phytoplankton and the high production of the system attract a variety of predators from more northern latitudes to exploit the food resources in the Southern Ocean.

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06/12/2019

One more morning in the Drake passage… the swell was 5-6 meters, winds were 8 beaufort, with occasional fog. The conditions for visual observations were not great… preventing us from doing whale identification training as there was nothing to detect… well there was… but everything was hidden and camouflaged behind the fog and the white caps. This is why it is important to keep updated records on sightability and visibility conditions. This will inform the model during the later analysis, by telling the model that your ability to detect animals was low and not that the whales were not there. Visibility (how far you can see) and sightability (the ability to detect a sighting) are important factors that affect your ability to make a visual detection…hence to make inferences about the amount of animals using in the area, similarly to the ambient noise levels for acoustic detections. Though, seabirds were in abundance… Albatrosses and cape petrels were gliding in the strong winds… a flock of cape petrels were following along the side of the boat…

One more crew member in the bridge… looking for signs of the first ice as we slowly travelled south. Suddenly … after a few hours… here it is… far away in the distance… like a  huge frozen wave… like a mountain… a white one… the tip was visible above the distant haze of the horizon… yes we were heading south for sure. Well, we could have been sailing north as well but our captain was not trying to hide the ship’s destination – as Amundsen had done on his expedition to the South Pole in 1910 – where he let his crew believe his initial plan for an expedition in the Artic, only to let them know the truth when they landed in Madeira, their last opportunity to head back home or continue for an unknown period towards south Pole.

A few more miles travelled … and a few more small icebergs appeared and seen… like pawns in a chess game… playing against invaders of their territory. The South Shetland Islands (Nelson Island, Livingston Island, King George Island and other) in the front line feel like gate keepers of the magic hidden world, a secret from reality.

Catabatic winds, the Chief Engineer was trying to tell me in norwegian (KATABATISKE WINDER in Norwegian and a Greek root as I realized a bit afterwards… καταβατικος), are blowing at the moment from the direction of the gate keepers… the warm weather which was in the area the last few days… combined with the frozen land of the islands pushes the winds down and away from the land towards the north … where we’re coming from. Is this another sign for us to turn away …? Or another reason to go against the wind and see what is hidden behind? A couple of humpback whale blows coming from two different directions … convinced us that we should do the latter… go against the winds and find out what the gate keepers are guarding.

Our first landing is in Half Moon Island (between Livinston and Greenwhich Island). This small island has been defined as an important Bird Area (IBA). We saw skuas, Antarctic shags, terns, kelp gulls and a colony of chinstrap penguins, with only one macaroni penguin, trying to camouflage itself among the rest – his name, apparently, is Elvis. The expedition guides have seen  him here for a few

years now.

 

The sound of the water hitting the shore combines with the vocalizations of the penguins creates a soundtrack to watch the impressive glaciers on the island across. Time to head back to ship

Written by Popi, 6th December 2019

 

4/12/2019

56° 18.24 S

65° 18.10 W

 

Woke up with the rocking and rolling sensation of the boat riding some apparent to be big waves… “we have started our sail in the North part of the Drake passage … there is no doubt about it” thought while still being in bed. Except the comforting sensation of rolling on 5-6 meter swell … while laying down the only worry that I had was if the laptop in the bridge collecting data on our locations… would stay in its position.

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