The acoustic team monitored for sperm whales during the night as we crossed the cyclone from its northwest to its eastern side. About 08:00 UTC, whales were heard, and acoustics stayed with the animals the remainder of the night. The visual team was on watch by 12:00 UTC, and the tag boats were deployed by about 13:30 UTC. We were located approximately on the east side of the cyclone, and the currents were northward at under 1 knot. Seas were the calmest we have seen them so far.

The RHIBs were deployed with a group of four sperm whales. These whales were tracked for much of the day. At 14:52 UTC, an S-tag was deployed. It was the first ever depth recording S-tag to be deployed! A biopsy sample and photo-id also were taken of this whale. Of the remaining three whales in the group, one had both a biopsy sample and photo-id taken, one had a biopsy only, and one had a photo-id only. One animal was too small to tag.

See the Figure 1 for one of today's photo-id pictures showing the unique shape of the whale's fluke. During the afternoon, the skies clouded up, and we had a few rainstorms in the area. A waterspout was spotted in the distance behind RHIB-1.

This scene was captured in a photo taken from RHIB-2 (Figure 2). At no time was RHIB-1 in the path of the waterspout. At approximately 21:00 UTC the tag boats were recovered, and we resumed our survey into a different area. Figure 3 shows the recovery of RHIB-1.

Four XBTs were taken across the cyclone during the night and today. The 15C isotherm was at 170 m on the NW, 164 meters near the eastern side, and 197 meters when we left the group of four whales. At 16:05 UTC, the 38 kHz ADCP was turned off, and the 38 kHz fishery echo sounder was deployed to monitor the deep backscatter layer since we were with whales again. The echo sounder was operational throughout the day and for about an hour after we left whales to give us data where whales were not present. We plan to continue to collect data with and without whales. The 38 kHz fishery echo sounder was recovered, and the ADCP was turned back on about 23:00 UTC. The 3-D array was redeployed at approximately 01:45 UTC on 16 June 2005.