161 nautical miles sailed today

161 nautical miles sailed today, the Horn lays 3802 miles ahead in a straight line.  

The sailing is good, the fair wind blows not too hard, now it goes up now it decreases. It is later during the day when the wind gradually rises, and the ship starts with what will become a heavy rolling for the rest of the day.

The Southwesterly wind becomes a Southerly, then back to the Southwest, and like that for several occasions today, the wind shifts and comes back with the passing squalls, we fall off, we steer back to course when they are over. Southeast of our position, a big Low Pressure, the Europa rides its back, deals with its winds and associated showers. But we are not alone here, a few more seabirds show up today, gliding effortlessly on the same winds, taking advantage of the same eastbound atmospheric and oceanic circulation. They soar over the roughest seas for incredible long distance, they spent most of their lives in the ocean. The only occasions when land sees them is when it is their time to nest, land that often is at some of the remotest islands on the planet. 

A solitary Campbell albatross fly by, an endemic breeder of this far-off island. A while later a Buller’s albatross follows. Royal albatrosses show up too, one of the largest flying birds in the world, which just nests in New Zealand together with another bird which we are seeing quite often theses days, the Grey faced petrel. Other more subantarctic widespread birds pay us a visit too, small flocks of Cape petrels swoosh close to the ship and our rig, a lonely Grey petrel was spotted too today. And with all those seabirds flying around and with a good weather that hold on quite well during the day, why not to start with a project that we have been joining often when the ship does its oceanic voyages, the eBird survey. Here, our data collection can help researchers understand the distribution of birds at sea and how they use the oceanic habitat. 

When the conditions, sail handling and weather allow, our daily meeting point to identify, count and log our observations will be at the poop deck. 

Having an increasing number of birds around might be related to the location in which we find ourselves, in the close proximity of one of the most characteristic underwater geological features in this part of the South Pacific, the Louisville Ridge, where over 70 Seamounts rise for several thousand meters from the deep surrounding sea floor. The depths around this seamount chain fall to about 5600 meters, while its highest tops have just 265 meters of water above them. Wait a minute, a closer look at the chart even shows a 16 meters shallow at the southeast tip of the ridge, the newest area of the vulcanism that form this feature, one of the longest seamount chains on earth, extending for some 4300 Km from here to the Northwest. Travelling with the large Pacific Tectonic Plate, there it disappears under the Indo-Australian Plate. 

Such a large underwater mountainous ridge, as they do the many other seamounts that pepper all of the planet’s oceans, interacts with shallow, surface and the deep water circulation, creating disturbances on the oceanic flows at all those different levels and upwelling cold and nutrient/mineral rich waters, thus creating planktonic rich areas, suitable habitats for benthic organisms and a rise on the abundance of fish and marine mammals.