August 31, 2013: A Fat Whale

365 Project, Day 68

Here is my day sixty-eight submission to my 365Project:

Today was my last day on the vessel offshore Angola...time to go home! Luckily for me, shortly before the helicopter as due to take me to shore (after 10 weeks on the ship!), a pair of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) swam across our bow nice and slowly. It felt like I was a getting a whale send off and I got this shot of this whale looking pretty fat and healthy from behind :)

Fun fact of the day:
Humpback whales of the southern hemisphere, when in their feeding grounds in the colder, more productive waters of Antarctica, eat tiny crustaceans (mostly krill) and small fish consuming up to 3000 lbs (1360 kg) of food per day. 

To read more on humpback whales check out the NOAA Fisheries webpage on humpback whales. 

  And some more photos from my last sighting on this job:

August 27, 2013: What You Lookin' At?

365 Project, Day 67

Here is my day sixty-seven submission to my 365Project:

I was delighted when this Grey-headed kingfisher (Halcyon leucocephala) landed on the heli-deck this morning during a fairly quiet watch. As I started snapping photos he was definitely keeping an eye on what I was up to; I loved this photo of him from straight on with the wind blowing up from under the heli-deck ruffling his feathers :)

Fun fact of the day:
Both sexes of the Grey-headed kingfisher excavate the nest, which is a burrow consisting of a tunnel leading to a nest chamber. It is usually dug into riverbanks, erosion gullies, irrigation ditches and termite mounds. 

To read more about the Grey-headed kingfisher check out Birdguides.com. 

Here are the rest of the Grey-headed kingfisher series:

August 26, 2013: Fish Ripples

365 Project, Day 66

Here is my day sixty-six submission to my 365Project:

It was so calm today and perfect for observations! This was great not only for looking for marine mammals but also sea turtles and fish...and I managed to get this shot of some fish swimming near the surface off our bow.

Here`s a photo of sea turtle I also spotted this morning. We`ve been seeing a lot of them floating at the surface resting...and they`re often there so long their carapace (shell) dries out!

Fact of the day:

Sea turtles are ancient ocean dwellers that have lived on Earth for 150 million years, since before the time of dinosaurs. Now, all seven species of sea turtles are either critically endangered or threatened. The population of leather back sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) has declined 95% in the last 25 years. 

To read more about sea turtles and their conservation check out Seaturtle.org.

August 25, 2013: Night Lights

365 Project, Day 65

Here is my day sixty-five submission to my 365Project:

I have just over a week left out here and I finally got a shot of one of the installations at night which I'm happy with. It's taken me a while to get this shot down; while photographing from a moving vessel I've had to get the right balance of shutter speed, ISO and use my VR to minimise camera shake :)

August 24, 2013: Rig Art

365 Project, Day 64

Here is my day sixty-three submission to my 365Project:

I've been so fascinated, yet somewhat weirded out, by the busy-ness of the design of these structures. There is just so much going on here...all the pipes!! 

Oh and here are some other photos from today:

A nice close up of a natural gas flare off the same rig...these things light up the offshore night and I've woken up more than once thinking it was early morning when really it was just the lights of all the installations offshore industry!

This humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) surfaced just off our port bow this afternoon. It was rolling at the surface doing pec waves and pec slaps and after I downloaded my photos I noticed something on the whale's back near the tail. After zooming in to the photo (second one below) I realized it had a remora (Family Echeneidae) attached to it and as the whale surface the remora was flung through the air...but remained attached :)

Fun fact of the day:
Remora's likely attach themselves to their hosts for transportation, protection from predators, increased courtship/reproduction potential, enhanced respiration and expanded feeding opportunities. They feed opportunistically on parasitic copepods (most of their diet), zooplankton, small nekton, food scraps from their hosts, and sloughing epidermal tissue and feces of the host.

A couple of years ago on a dive off Zanzibar, Tanzania we had a remora swimming with us the entire dive and it tried many times to attach to myself and the other divers!

To read more about remora and their association with marine mammals check out this pdf.

August 23, 2013: Synchronised Dive

365 Project, Day 63

Here is my day sixty-three submission to my 365Project:

We had an incredibly busy day today...13 sightings of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) with the majority of them occurring around the same time. In the morning we were trying to track six different groups at once and then, in the afternoon, we were tracking 3 groups at once. It was so busy I barely had time to pick up my camera and take photos! 

These two whales came by quite close so I managed to get a shot of the two of them diving together. You can easily see how different their tail flukes look (one on the left is black, one on the right is white).

Fun fact of the day:
Researchers use photographs of the underside of humpback whale tail flukes to identify and track movements of individual whales and to estimate how many are in a population. Patterns of pigmentation, scarring and shape of flukes are unique to each individual whale. 

You can read more about humpback whale photo-ID and see examples of more photo-ID research at the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Photographic Catalogue of Humpback Whales of British Columbia webpage (my home!).


And here are a few more photos I managed to take while trying to track all these whales:

August 22, 2013: Gold Chains

365 Project, Day 62

Here is my day sixty-two submission to my 365Project:

Imagine having gold chains the size of these anchor chains?! That would be something :)

Fun fact of the day:

Before the invention of anchor chain ships used hemp rope which often broke and put lives in danger. 

Read more about the history of anchor chains at this BBC - A History of the World webpage. 

August 21, 2013: A Pair Of Humpbacks

365 Project, Day 61
Here is my day sixty-one submission to my 365Project:

Well, hopefully I'm not posting too many pictures of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) (ha ha!) but we had 10 sightings of them today so how could I not post more? This pair of whales swam past us today, they were part of a group of five, who all crossed ahead of us with these two passing closest about 100 m off the bow!

Fun fact of the day:

In breeding and calving areas, such as off Angola during the southern hemisphere winter, humpback whale social groups typically consist of a mother/calf and an escort male. Males will escort females in order to mate and fend off other males from mating with the female. 

To read more about humpback whale social groups during the mating season check out Capt Andy's Whale Social Structure & Communication webpage.  

Here are some more images taken while watching this group of whales:

August 20, 2013: Whale Nostrils

365 Project, Day 60

Here is my day sixty submission to my 365Project:

This whale calf surfaced just off the bow today and I loved that I managed to get a shot with it's blowholes wide open :)

Fun fact of the day:

Many people don't know this but all baleen whales, i.e. humpbacks, blues, fins etc., have two blowholes while all the toothed whales, i.e. all dolphins, sperm whales, only have one blow hole. 

Read more about the differences between baleen and toothed whales at Whale Trust's webpage About Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises.


Here are some more photos from this sighting:

I loved the look of the water around the whale after the droplets of water from the blow land! 

August 19, 2013: A Sense Of Scale

365 Project, Day 59

Here is my day fifty-nine submission to my 365Project:

We have been passing very close to Kuito FPSO this past week and I always find it so interesting just how small people look when we see them walking around on this beast...like this guy going for his evening stroll around the heli-deck. 

Fun fact of the day:

In 1996 the Troll A platform set the World Guiness Record for the world's largest offshore gas platform with an overall height of 472 m. In 2006, for the 10th anniversary of Statoil's operatorship of Troll A, Katie Melua held a concert at the base of the platform and the concert set a new world record for the deepest underwater  concert at 303 m below sea level. 

You can search for more interesting world records on the Guiness World Records webpage.

Read more about Troll A platform here. 

August 18, 2013: Sweet Dreaming

365 Project, Day 58

Here is my day fifty-eight submission to my 365Project:

Okay, well I wasn't actually sleeping when I took this photo...I had been trying to figure out what to do for my photo today when I was lying in bed and thought it might be fun to take some sort of photo from in my bed. Although I felt a bit silly taking a self portrait while pretending to sleep I thought it turned out pretty fun (and I have to admit I was chuckling to myself when I did it!).

Fun fact of the day:

"Lucid dreaming" is what dreaming when you knowing you're dreaming is called. Today I listened to another wonderful Radiolab podcast, this one on dreaming, and I heard some fascinating stories about people and their lucid dreams. Apparently we should all be able to do this...and here's a link to the Lucid Dreaming website with tips on how to do this. Sounds like fun to me :)

August 17, 2013: Olive Ridley Sea Turtle

365 Project, Day 57

Here is my day fifty-seven submission to my 365Project:

Until today we haven't seen any turtles (although I've had 3-4 suspected sightings but they were too far to tell and weren't moving at all!) then today this Olive Ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) was one of three sightings of turtles we had! It might have helped we had flat calm seas but it is also nearing nesting season here and apparently the turtles start to aggregate offshore Angola about this time of the year before heading to the beaches to nest starting in September.

When I first spotted this turtle it was floating at the surface and, apparently, had been there so long it's shell dried out! Unfortunately, we rudely disturbed it from its rest and, as the vessel passed, it dove and swam straight down. 

Fun fact of the day:

The smooth shells and paddle-like flippers of sea turtles help them speed through the water as fast as 24 km/hr. These turtles have been known to swim up to 4 828 km in one year!

For more info on Olive Ridley Sea Turtles go check out the MarinBio and the Sea Turtle Conservancy webpages.

August 16, 2013: A Friendly Whale

365 Project, Day 56

Here is my day fifty-six submission to my 365Project:

This humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) joined us and swam with the vessel for two hours today! I've never seen such a thing before and it certainly was fun having a whale accompany us for that long. Perfect for photo opportunities :) 

Fact of the day:
Today, the largest conservation issue for humpback whales are entanglement in fishing gear, ship strikes, and noise pollution. 

Read more about humpback whales and their conservation issues at NOAA's humpback whale webpage.


Here are some more photos from this interesting encounter:

August 15, 2013: Moon Fearing Cloud

365 Project, Day 55

Here is my day fifty-five submission to my 365Project:

Well, it is another moon shot but with a slightly different twist. I liked the way the 'man on the moon' looked like he was fearing the approaching clouds! 

Fun fact of the day:

The moon is not round (or spherical) instead it is shaped like an egg. If you go outside and look up, one of the small ends is pointing right at you. The moon's centre of mass is not at the geometric centre but about 2 km off centre. 

Read more fun moon facts at Space.com.

Here are some more photos I took of the moon this evening:

August 14, 2013: Offshore Bat Action!

365 Project, Day 54

Here is my day fifty-four submission to my 365Project:

Quite unexpectedly I had a very different type of mammal come by this morning. Initially, I thought another juvenile cape gannet was approaching us (I had just seen one shortly before this) but as I started snapping photos I thought maybe it was a hawk or some other type of bird...but then I realized it was actually a large bat! After some consultation with Google and other people who have worked offshore it is a straw-coloured fruit bat (Eidolon helvum). This sighting definitely made my morning :) 

Fun fact of the day:

Straw-coloured fruit bats are strong flyers and have been seen up to 125 miles from the nearest land (we were 40 miles offshore today).

Read more about the Straw-coloured fruit bat at the Oregon Zoo's webpage about these bats.


And here are some more images of the bat in flight:

August 13, 2013: Common Tern

365 Project, Day 53

Here is my day fifty-three submission to my 365Project:

We haven't had a lot of bird life on this job but we have occasionally had some terns fly by...and I was pretty happy I managed to get a decent photo of this common tern (Sterna hirundo) today. 

Fun fact of the day:

Common terns usually drink in flight, gliding with its wings slightly raised, and dipping its bill several times into the water.

Read more about common terns at Whatbird.com. 

August 12, 2013: Kuito and BBLT

365 Project, Day 52

Here is my day fifty-two submission to my 365Project:

As we move along our our survey lines we are getting closer and closer to some of these offshore installations. The one on the left, Kuito FPSO, is a Floating Production Storage Off-take vessel, which is used to take on hydrocarbons to process and then transport to an oil tanker or, less commonly, a pipeline.

Fun fact of the day:

Offshore oil production began in the late 1940s. Originally oil platforms sat on the seabed in shallow water and the oil was exported via tanker or pipeline but as exploration moved to deeper waters in the 1970s floating production systems came into use. 

Read more about the history of offshore production systems here.

August 11, 2013: Offshore Night Lights

365 Project, Day 51

Here is my day fifty-one submission to my 365Project:

I have been trying to get a decent photo of the lights, at night, of these offshore installations. It's difficult being on a ship because there's too much movement to do a long exposure. So, I've been playing with burst mode (with the hopes of getting many shots of which one might be sharp) and, so far, I think this is the best I have got. I am still going to keep experimenting though...and hopefully get something even better before I leave in just over a week!

Fun fact of the day:

About 150 billion cubic metres of natural gas are flared in oil production every year - more than a quarter of this amount in offshore production. 

Read more about work being done to turn this gas into a useful energy resource here in this document by CompactGTL.

August 10, 2013: Tail lob!!

365 Project, Day 50

Here is my day fifty submission to my 365Project:

Some of the humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) we've been observing here have been very surface active. A few days ago I watched a whale breach (jump out of the water with nearly all of its body exposed) more than 20 times! We've also seen individuals doing multiple tail slaps and tail lobs. Tail lobs (also called peduncle slaps) are when a whale throws the rear portion of its body to strike the surface. 

Fun fact of the day:

During the mating season males will form competitive groups where they will physically battle for access to a female. They will often strike each other with their tail flukes, pectoral fins and heads even drawing blood in awesome displays of aggression. 

Read more about humpback whale at the Wildlife Conservation Society humpback whale webpage.

And here are some other photos I took today.:

Helicopter en route to one of the offshore installations...after some editing :)

Wilson's storm petrel (Oceanites oceanicus)...we see these   little guys, flying low over the water surface foraging, almost daily.