I woke up a little seasick because we entered the Drake
Passage around midnight. They advised us
to keep one hand "for" the ship to catch ourselves and that was great advice. The Drake Passage is notorious for huge ship-rocking waves so the crews warned we would either have the "Drake Shake" or get lucky and experience the "Drake Lake".
Passengers attended four lectures today:
Antarctica Photography, Albatross: Ocean Wanderers, Antarctic Ecology, and
Discovering Antarctica. All were very
informative and reiterated what we had already learned in the online
portion of the course. Flocks of birds
have continuously followed the ship since leaving the Beagle Channel. The ship's wake stirs up the
water, bringing wildlife and nutrients to the surface. It was very cool to see Albatrosses in real
life just after the lecture. It is
incredible that they almost never flap their wings but can glide through the air with such speed.
In addition to the lectures, the group doing Module I
(ecotourism) met up to discuss our game plan.
We are aiming to look at ecotourism but we were not sure if we should
include non-passengers (i.e. the staff and the Oceanites researchers on board). In the end, we decided to call everyone “visitors” and then would break that term
up into students, vacationers, researchers, and staff/crew because all are
having an impact on the pristine environment.
After dinner I decided to spend some time up on the deck by myself. There I spotted the first icebergs!! Three naps and three delicious meals later, I
went to bed with light still coming through my window.
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