Sunday, August 1, 2010

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Although we had high hopes for the day, it is well known in field work that if you have one kick ass day, the next will be so-so or miserable. I was trying not to get my hopes up, but the spirit from yesterday was still in the air. When we left the marina, the sunrise was gorgeous. We were on our way to the river by 6 and you could just see a bit of color on the horizon. In the truck this morning Alvaro said he had no idea why anyone would wake up early if they didn’t have to. This would be my reason. The sunsets here are gorgeous. I guess they are really nice in other places as well, but I’m no expert. I guess I am also a bit biased. I am really loving Australia a lot more than I thought I would. Anyways, back to the story. The morning was gorgeous but I could see another fog cloud over the river. The temperature dropped greatly from yesterday, so I guess it makes sense that it would be foggy. This however was like driving through a marshmellow. It hit us like a ton of bricks and as soon as we were in the cloud you couldn’t see anything else. I flipped the lights on for the boat because I was actually afraid of running into someone else. I guess the fishermen are smarter than us though and realize that going out in fog like that is pointless. That’s what I was thinking at least, that is until I missed a diving snubfin by a few feet. It was around 7 and Alvaro already had the pinger in the water. Could today really be better than yesterday? I had my doubts but I was feeling a bit better. We motored in towards the river mouth as the cloud seemed to be a bit weaker there. For the past few days, Alvaro has been noticing an odd croaking sound in his recordings, so today we decided to do ‘croak tests’. At random places we stopped to drop the hydrophone in the water in areas where we knew there weren’t any dolphins. At first he said that he didn’t hear any croaks, but in the later tests throughout the day we did! Hopefully when we get home we can ask some of the fishermen and see if they know of anything that might be making the sound.

We spent the rest of the day driving around and were able to get the remaining two pinger trials relatively quickly. After that we took a short lunch brak and lounged in the sun then headed home for an early day. I was really tired at this point, so after nearly falling asleep on the way back to the marina we got home and I took a really long nap. Having got the remaining pinger trials, Alvaro was in high spirits and he said he would take us to dinner again. He got himself a little tipsy and story after story ensued. Alvaro is a nice guy, but MAN can he talk. In fact, he never shuts up. Get him a little drunk and his talking becomes louder and more incessant. We were the life of the tiny little resterant and we headed home around closing time. All of us collapsed into bed right away. Luckily as we don’t need anmore sound samples we have the day off tomorrow. Alvaro suggested we go on a ‘mini cavation’ to celebrate. I’m sure we will think of something tomorrow morning.

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Photos

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Some of the snubfin we saw in the 5th sighting