Rock on...

IT’S A SPERM WHALE PARTY DOWN THERE! We’ve just heard lots of sperm whales all clicking away at the same time, having a good chat, maybe playing chase. They’re all boy sperm whales off Scotland, the girls stay in warmer waters in the tropics (near where Nemo the clown fish lives). Here’s a picture of what a sperm whale looks like (borrowed, since we don’t have one this good!):

We can tell how many sperm whales there are from the direction of their clicks, and we think there were at least 6 whales all clicking away at the same time. Shortly afterwards, we saw their blows at the surface. Sperm whales dive for an hour or more (imagine holding your breath and counting to 3600 – that’s a long time to hold your breath!). So when they come back up to the surface they spend a bit of time recovering, and filling back up on air for their next dive. We were SO EXCITED not only to hear the whales but then see them! Woooooooo!

We’re in deep water again of the Rockall Trough, but on the way here from Iceland we passed a small rock covered in bird poo – Rockall. We got really excited to see it – in fact here is a photo of us with the scientist in charge of the hydrophone, Dr Clare Embling, and you can just about see the white bird poo tip of Rockall as a dot in the background (circled in red):

We’re in the middle of the ocean, with the bottom often deeper than 2000m, so it’s pretty odd and exciting to come across a rock sticking out of the sea! Here’s a map showing where Rockall is (it’s where the mini ship is on the map), the darker blue areas show the deepest water & you can see the UK and Ireland on the right hand side of the map.

Tomorrow we won’t be listening for whales, because we are going to find out what is living on the bottom of the sea in water 2000m deep (~200 double decker boats). We’re very excited to meet some more creatures of the deep! 

Bye bye for now, Meg & Woody :)