Back to the south…
Greetings from the Langseth, chief scientist Lindsay here! We are fully in the home stretch now!! After more than 4000 km of data acquisition and 33 days at sea we are entering the final stages of the project and have less than 20 hrs of data collection to go!
The moon sets over Haida Gwaii and the back deck of the Langseth on our second to last night of shooting.
The northern Pacific offshore British Columbia and southeast Alaska is a whale hotspot and we do our best to keep our impact on the animals to a minimum. Onboard, we have a crew of protected species observers (PSOs) whose job is to keep watch for whales, dolphins and other protected animals. If they see an animal come within the mitigation area, we shut down our airguns and wait for them to clear the area. After the animals clear the area, we wait another hour before ramping up the sound source again.
Friendly dolphins riding the bow waves.
In the southern part of the study area, near Haida Gwaii, we saw whale after whale after whale. So, that means we had some parts of our planned survey that we didn’t get to in the early part of the survey. After finishing the rest of the data collection in the northern and central parts of the survey area, we are heading back south to try to fill in the data gaps. After that, we will start picking up the airguns and the 15 km streamer and make our way back to shore.
Science party ready to end strong.