The Adventures of Team Aquila!: Day two!

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Day two!

A beautiful end to our first day of surveying!! We anchored up for the night in a beautiful spot called Union Bay.

Angle boards used to give a precise angle of a sighting

The Ski is mostly protected from the weather, up top behind the Bridge,

As I write this we are going past the town of Wrangell, surveying around Woronkofski Island. Projects of the day include looking at whales, watching for bowriders...

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And in todays breaking news, a sailboat driver with a death wish decided to cut in front of us. oh joy!! He crossed about 100 feet in front of the only boat in ten miles!

Today's REAL projects included replacing the heater in the lower head and fabricating a lifting cradle for our jetski.

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About the current project

The Aquila is on charter with NOAA for the majority of the summer of 2012, helping to provide accurate population estimates of marine mammal species. The work is split up into two main parts, the first being a mainly visual survey of whales and porpoises. The Aquila left Seattle on the 3rd of July, surveying from Ketchikan, around Glacier Bay, and back to Ketchikan. The NOAA team said their goodbyes in Ketchikan on the 21st, then we raced back to Seattle to begin preparations for our second trip. After six hectic days in Seattle, the Aquila departed for Dutch Harbor, Alaska. As I write this, the Aquila is three days from Dutch, where we will pick up the second NOAA team. This project will involve much more labor and equipment than the first, including Big-Eye spotting scopes, AN/SSQ type 53 Sonobouys, and over 40 subsea moorings specially designed to listen for and track large marine mammals.