Back across the Drake

The trip back across the Drake was definitely sportier than on the way south, though nothing too bad.  But the outside decks were closed for about a day and a half of the passage, and lots of people disappeared into their rooms because they were seasick.  On the worst night, it was a bit hard to sleep, just because of all of the movement -- I remember waking up in the middle of the night and feeling like I was swinging from head to toe.  It was also kind of annoying to get around the boat on one afternoon.  On Thursday, there were 4 lectures, all of which I attended — one I can’t remember (?), one on how whales play a role as “ecosystem engineers” (by moving nutrients from the deep to the surface, so phytoplankton can bloom), one on penguin evolution, and one on “human impacts on the polar regions”.  The last one was really more a presentation on how penguin populations have changed over the past 40 or so years, and then various conversation topics, including plastic pollution and cetacean entanglement/by-catch.  We also did a debrief on the diving operations with Faith.

I took no pictures of the scenery on the trip back (probably because the decks were closed for so much of it), but here is a nice picture of the last dinner aboard, which was kind of a fancy affair.