A minke whale surfacing
A minke whale going for a deep dive (they arch their back)
Never seen that! But apparently it happens..
Sometimes around: white-beaked dolphins
And very rarely: a humpback whale!
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Some visuals..
Here are a few pictures of what we see when we are on the boat..or on the lighthouse (please note: not my pictures, but taken from our whale-watching boat):
A minke whale surfacing
A minke whale going for a deep dive (they arch their back)
Never seen that! But apparently it happens..
Sometimes around: white-beaked dolphins
And very rarely: a humpback whale!
A minke whale surfacing
A minke whale going for a deep dive (they arch their back)
Never seen that! But apparently it happens..
Sometimes around: white-beaked dolphins
And very rarely: a humpback whale!
Better late than never...
Very sorry for this extremely late update! Will try to be better in the future, as I am not quite sure how to put everything into one post…quite a bit has happened!
So, as this is a whale-research project, I have the feeling I have been updating you very much on my personal life, rather than focusing on the actual research we are doing. So here a few facts about my work:
Currently I am back on landbased and I have not worked one day so far (but I will come back to this later). First things first, I am a record holder! Yes, apparently the one thing I am quite good at is tracking whales. My current record is 68 tracks, meaning I followed a whale surfacing for 68 times before loosing it (this could be due to the animal simply not surfacing, as we stop looking for them after 10 minutes, but they can dive for 20 minutes; the second possibility is that there suddenly appear 1-5 other minke whales in the vicinity, making it virtually impossible to decide, which ‘your’ minke was). So yes, my record is 68! My first record was 61, but I broke it about 2 days later…to compare, the closest number of a college is 40 and our dear project leader Fredrik…has about 30! So yes, pure luck and patience helped me out, but of course raw talent is the basis ☺
So why are we currently not heading to the lighthouse? Well there a four reasons and you may take them apart and put them together however you want, but they all mean: no work!
1. Our car is broken! We have an old Volvo that since we arrived to Iceland has broken down 4 times (roughly estimating once every 1 week!). This time something is wrong with the clutch, making it impossible to change the gear…currently its in reverse!
2. The weather! Today is the first day that the weather would allow us to work (but due to the lack of car it does not really help us). The last couple of days there have been gales with speeds up to 20m/s! We can work at a maximum of 6m/s! Not the best conditions if 2 meters high waves are kind of hiding the minke whales…
3. The lighthouse we work on is being repainted! That means although some of us could work on it on Tuesday, as the scaffolding and the ropes were on the opposite side, this weekend ropes are covering pretty much every part of the sea, making it kind of difficult putting up any equipment, leave alone actually trying to look past the ropes!
4. Beloved buses! Yes, there are buses here in Keflavik and they are for free! But, they run about every 2 hours and weekends…well who would want to travel at the weekends?
So you can see, fate really does not want us to work! And yes, first it was quite nice to rest all day and do absolutely nothing except watch movies…but even me (a movie freak!) is slowly but surely reaching the limits of watching one movie after another!
These days the only thing we can do is go for hikes (I have 2 pair of shoes, both adorned with about 3-7 holes each and non-existing soles), play table-football (German: Kicker, Spanish: futbolin, Italian: something similar to Spanish) or (for the others), they can go to our little gym! Normally these days would call for a trip to Reykjavik, but the lack of a car kind of puts an end to this idea!
The only thing we are hoping for is that the actual owners of the car can manage to repair the car (the father of the owner is some sort of mechanic and has managed to repair it so far). Else there are going to be some lovely bus rides in the future!
So I might do a more detailed post tomorrow about the adventures of the WISP group outside of the work-life but here just a few facts (not in chronological order):
Went out on Wednesday evening to watch a very depressing football game, got drunk and met the bosses of Elding in a club.
Last week we went to the Inspired by Iceland concert and saw Damien Rice and Glen Hansard play live!
Robert Pattinson (for all those twilight fans) was on our whale-watching boat today!!! And Megan (the guide) got a kiss on the CHEEK!! (yes, I am stuck in landbased). This is actually quite a bizarre thing too, as Megan just did a Twilight marathon just 2 days ago and we all went to see the Eclipse movie yesterday, so for him to pop up today… kind of random!! I for some reason cannot believe that he will pop by the lighthouse any time soon, so apparently this is the second time I have missed my chance to see him (he was on the UBC campus to do some Twilight filming, while I was happily sitting in my room doing I don’t know what!).
Yesterday evening we met probably one of the richest men in Keflavik, if not in Iceland. He has rented out 2 apartments above us, as he is getting divorced with his second wife. He joined us for supper in our kitchen and told us he is moving out of his 440 m2 house, which he promptly showed us yesterday night! The boys have gone hiking with him today, as he is one of those people, who climbed the Everest with 50!
Next week I am going to be on landbased with the four guys...and the four guys only! The other two girls are going to be on the boat! Fun times ahead…
And last but not least, for all you Aberdeen people: Christoph has managed to arrive at the project! So that means we are currently 5 people sleeping in a one-bedroom apartment! Kind of depressing after seeing a mansion yesterday evening…
Hope everybody is holding up well!
Cheers, until a more detailed report about crazy adventures in Iceland!
So, as this is a whale-research project, I have the feeling I have been updating you very much on my personal life, rather than focusing on the actual research we are doing. So here a few facts about my work:
Currently I am back on landbased and I have not worked one day so far (but I will come back to this later). First things first, I am a record holder! Yes, apparently the one thing I am quite good at is tracking whales. My current record is 68 tracks, meaning I followed a whale surfacing for 68 times before loosing it (this could be due to the animal simply not surfacing, as we stop looking for them after 10 minutes, but they can dive for 20 minutes; the second possibility is that there suddenly appear 1-5 other minke whales in the vicinity, making it virtually impossible to decide, which ‘your’ minke was). So yes, my record is 68! My first record was 61, but I broke it about 2 days later…to compare, the closest number of a college is 40 and our dear project leader Fredrik…has about 30! So yes, pure luck and patience helped me out, but of course raw talent is the basis ☺
So why are we currently not heading to the lighthouse? Well there a four reasons and you may take them apart and put them together however you want, but they all mean: no work!
1. Our car is broken! We have an old Volvo that since we arrived to Iceland has broken down 4 times (roughly estimating once every 1 week!). This time something is wrong with the clutch, making it impossible to change the gear…currently its in reverse!
2. The weather! Today is the first day that the weather would allow us to work (but due to the lack of car it does not really help us). The last couple of days there have been gales with speeds up to 20m/s! We can work at a maximum of 6m/s! Not the best conditions if 2 meters high waves are kind of hiding the minke whales…
3. The lighthouse we work on is being repainted! That means although some of us could work on it on Tuesday, as the scaffolding and the ropes were on the opposite side, this weekend ropes are covering pretty much every part of the sea, making it kind of difficult putting up any equipment, leave alone actually trying to look past the ropes!
4. Beloved buses! Yes, there are buses here in Keflavik and they are for free! But, they run about every 2 hours and weekends…well who would want to travel at the weekends?
So you can see, fate really does not want us to work! And yes, first it was quite nice to rest all day and do absolutely nothing except watch movies…but even me (a movie freak!) is slowly but surely reaching the limits of watching one movie after another!
These days the only thing we can do is go for hikes (I have 2 pair of shoes, both adorned with about 3-7 holes each and non-existing soles), play table-football (German: Kicker, Spanish: futbolin, Italian: something similar to Spanish) or (for the others), they can go to our little gym! Normally these days would call for a trip to Reykjavik, but the lack of a car kind of puts an end to this idea!
The only thing we are hoping for is that the actual owners of the car can manage to repair the car (the father of the owner is some sort of mechanic and has managed to repair it so far). Else there are going to be some lovely bus rides in the future!
So I might do a more detailed post tomorrow about the adventures of the WISP group outside of the work-life but here just a few facts (not in chronological order):
Went out on Wednesday evening to watch a very depressing football game, got drunk and met the bosses of Elding in a club.
Last week we went to the Inspired by Iceland concert and saw Damien Rice and Glen Hansard play live!
Robert Pattinson (for all those twilight fans) was on our whale-watching boat today!!! And Megan (the guide) got a kiss on the CHEEK!! (yes, I am stuck in landbased). This is actually quite a bizarre thing too, as Megan just did a Twilight marathon just 2 days ago and we all went to see the Eclipse movie yesterday, so for him to pop up today… kind of random!! I for some reason cannot believe that he will pop by the lighthouse any time soon, so apparently this is the second time I have missed my chance to see him (he was on the UBC campus to do some Twilight filming, while I was happily sitting in my room doing I don’t know what!).
Yesterday evening we met probably one of the richest men in Keflavik, if not in Iceland. He has rented out 2 apartments above us, as he is getting divorced with his second wife. He joined us for supper in our kitchen and told us he is moving out of his 440 m2 house, which he promptly showed us yesterday night! The boys have gone hiking with him today, as he is one of those people, who climbed the Everest with 50!
Next week I am going to be on landbased with the four guys...and the four guys only! The other two girls are going to be on the boat! Fun times ahead…
And last but not least, for all you Aberdeen people: Christoph has managed to arrive at the project! So that means we are currently 5 people sleeping in a one-bedroom apartment! Kind of depressing after seeing a mansion yesterday evening…
Hope everybody is holding up well!
Cheers, until a more detailed report about crazy adventures in Iceland!
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