The Bridge calls down to the main lab whenever there's a whale spotting, and whoever can typically dashes out onto deck with cameras and binoculars for a chance to see... well, anything that isn't their sampling apparatus, really, and whales are perfect for that. I took these pictures while a pod of pilot whales (probably) was checking out the boat and a distance of 300 - 500m, and off on the horizon some very large whale or group of whales was spouting off some huge plumes of water, easily visible against the blue sky.

The whale spotters are (left to right) Maren, Emily, and Alba.

The weather is changing, and I thought these two pictures, taken literally seconds apart show. One is off to the port of the ship, the other to starboard. We've been very lucky weather-wise, but we have some 20-30 knot winds coming our way tonight. It'll be a little rough, but nothing that should slow us down terribly. Tonight (saturday night) we'll be doing another "underway survey" for the flow-through folks, so no CTDs and nothing big going over the side.