Position at 0100" 27 37.5N 085 18.1W.

We reached the 200 meter isobath at around 10 a.m. and streamed the short hydrophone. Much of the morning was spent in not entirely successful attempts to solve electrical noise problems that were not apparent during our brief trials off St. Petersburg. Although we are using the same boat as last year, some changes have been made, and there are signs that maintenance has not been all that it might have been, so that a system that worked perfectly last year seems now to be hexed by earthly problems. Such are the trials and tribulations of trying to run sensitive electronic equipment on a boat taken out of a charter fleet and hurriedly adapted.

We have been making one-minute listening stations every 15 minutes through the day but haven’t heard any whales. This is not entirely unexpected, this first section along the Floridian coast is an area where in the past we have only encountered occasional small clusters of medium sized males. The absence of any sperm whales has at least provided space to train our new crew members in using Logger and in what to expect once we encounter sperm whales. The day was not without any marine mammal sightings: pantropical spotted dolphins paid us a couple of visits through the morning.

We are now zig-zagging through our southernmost search area, staying in water between 500 and 2000 meters.