The dawn welcomed us with calm seas and blue skies dappled with clouds, lovely conditions for a day at sea. At some point during the night, a white-tailed tropicbird crash landed on the ship, but it was a simple rescue, and Richard gave everyone a close-up lesson about the bird before he released it from the aft deck. Eagle eyes were on deck scanning the waters throughout the day, but sightings were limited to the occasional lone seabird.
Back inside the lounge we had a great series of presentations. Mike Greenfelder’s talk, “Coral: Base of the Tropical Ocean,” gave us an excellent background not only on the variety of coral to be seen during our voyage, but more importantly he painted us a vivid picture about the future of coral reefs and the impact of changing ocean temperatures.
“Bringing Light to Life” became the subject of the afternoon, with Jack Swenson sharing “creative and compositional ideas for taking, editing, and optimizing digital images.” This was followed by a lively Q&A session with questions running the full gamut of photo subjects and Jack, myself, and Flip all chiming in on answers.
Tom wrapped up the series with his presentation, “Human Migrations into the Pacific,” a fascinating exploration of the human history and expansion across the South Pacific, and with the perfect amount of humor to keep us all smiling.
Sunset came with a lovely surprise from the hotel department, a cocktail party on the upper deck. With rum punch drinks in hand, we watched the day draw to a close with a gorgeous and dramatic display of color and clouds.
