{"id":304,"date":"2004-01-04T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-04T21:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2004\/01\/04\/southern-atlantic-ocean-3\/"},"modified":"2011-01-14T23:13:11","modified_gmt":"2011-01-15T07:13:11","slug":"southern-atlantic-ocean-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2004\/01\/04\/southern-atlantic-ocean-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern Atlantic Ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lunch ended about an hour ago, and shortly after returning to deck <a href=\"http:\/\/rodplanck.com\/\">Rod<\/a> let out a tremendous shout.  I assumed he had spotted another rare seabird (the man loves his birding) but following his wildly pointing finger revealed a minke whale about a hundred feet away barreling toward the boat.  Skimming about a foot beneath the surface the whale was matching our speed, and once within about fifty feet of the boat he began slowly cruising toward the bow, giving a full, clear view of his head and eye each time that he surfaced.  Hoping the whale might be planning to ride our bow wave I started running down the decks, but the whale traveled up to our bow wake, hesitated a moment, and then accelerated away and out of sight.  It was completely awesome &#8212; Rod is probably still up on deck giving high fives.<\/p>\n<p>The other sightings today included the usual cast of seabirds and four hourglass dolphins (at about 6:30 this morning) that played in the wake off of the stern for three or four minutes.  Hanging out with the birders I&#8217;ve learned most of the common birds through osmosis, and can now identify five species of albatross, several different prions and petrels, and assorted others.  In addition to the whale, today&#8217;s other big event was that Ted and Linda (ship&#8217;s nurse) convinced me that saving money is overrated, so I&#8217;ve signed on with Ted for an eight person, one month sailing trip to South Georgia that he&#8217;s planning for next October.  The practical side of me says that I&#8217;m crazy, but the adventurer in me says that a trip like that comes along once in a decade if you&#8217;re lucky, and that opportunity doesn&#8217;t knock twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lunch ended about an hour ago, and shortly after returning to deck Rod let out a tremendous shout. I assumed he had spotted another rare seabird (the man loves his birding) but following his wildly pointing finger revealed a minke whale about a hundred feet away barreling toward the boat. Skimming about a foot beneath &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2004\/01\/04\/southern-atlantic-ocean-3\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Southern Atlantic Ocean&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-antarctica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2521,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions\/2521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}