Rob Webster - www.robertwebster.org

b l a c k a n d w h i t e

s e a l w a t c h

on a dull and flat light day, i volunteer for seal watch. this involves standing on shore as close as possible to a planned dive site, scanning the ice and sea for lurking potential predators - essentially to detect the presence of leopard seals. if you are not familiar with the history bas divers have with leopard seals, see this link, and you'll realise the importance of this job.

the bit of water in the photos is south cove, where kirsty brown was killed in 2003. the ice cliffs are part of the end of the glacier, the hills above the south end of reptile ridge. anyway, i watched for seals for the requisite half an hour, saw nothing, the dive boat came round from the wharf, and the second kelvin and birgit dropped into the water, a huge leopard seal appeared about 200m out to sea amongst ice cakes, and then disappeared. jim kept the divers on the surface until i got another look at it, but the next time it appeared it was right next to the boat, so the divers were very hurriedly grabbed out of the water and returned to the wharf. pretty scary, but they seemed alright. kelvin managed to see the seal under the water which i think he was quite chuffed about later.

apart from that nothing too much to report. the weather continues to be poor, and although there was a pre-breakfast powderfest planned this morning at stork bowl because the contrast was/is so poor. in other news, i have set up another little room upstairs to be my electronic music room (not before time. time is awfully spe so hopefully i'll start producing some tunes soon, or rather finish off some of the tens of half finished things.

11 . s e p t . 2 0 0 7

l e n t i c u l a r c l o u d s

the weather has again been foul for a few days, and warm with it, getting above freezing and making everything generally damp! we've had a fair bit of snow recently which, accompanied by strong winds, has conspired to stop us getting into or out of our buildings unless armed with a shovel.

today, i tried to view a partial (70%) solar eclipse but the sun stayed just behind the clouds during the crossing of the sun so i didn't get to see it. so i'm posting a couple of pictures i took a few days ago when the high winds were sculpting fast-moving and beautiful lenticular clouds at about 10,000 feet. i attempted to take some time-lapse films but found out afterwards that my camera had sneakily auto-focused on the dirt on my window...

i think that the one above looks a bit like a giant flying woodlouse, ( a skylouse?), perhaps flying through the air to the right and casting a shadow behind and below it on an imaginary air surface. or maybe the light rippling as of skin on the top bit is like one part of a surreal Dali-esque elephant of which the other parts are scattered across the skies ready to reconvene at an appropriate future time and bear the world away to the next phase of it's existence, post humanity? there's a third school of thought that says it's a cloud.

this one is another example of the elegant shaped clouds that are indicative of violent movement of air after being deflected upwards by a terrestrial obstacle.