Sea conditions today were perfect. Of course, if National Geographic Orion were a sailing ship, we would probably have not enjoyed the day so much as we would have been becalmed. We were “like a painted ship upon a painted sea.” As far as the eye could see, there were puffy clouds scattered about, many of which produced picturesque reflections. It was a bit odd that there appeared to always be less cloud coverage overhead than anywhere else. This optical illusion was caused by the foreshortened lower angles of our views towards the horizon, making the clouds looked more concentrated farther away in all directions. Even so, we could observe several huge isolated cumulo-nimbus thunderheads here and there that were dumping huge amounts of concentrated rain into the ocean. This seemed a waste of freshwater when one considers the many drought-stricken terrestrial areas around the world.
A slight breeze built up in the later afternoon that was just enough to produce some curious Langmuir circulation lines. These familiar parallel smooth streaks on the sea surface are caused by shallow, slow, counter-rotating vortices at the ocean's surface that are aligned with the prevailing wind. This simple scientific explanation probably doesn’t really make much sense to non-oceanographers, but the lines almost always cause questions and conversations among our guests.
This stretch of the Indian Ocean is very deep and there are no land masses or significant sea floor rises to cause upwellings that might present food for surface creatures. It is rather like an oceanic desert. However, there is some life around, because we saw numerous flying fish, a few wedge-tailed shearwaters, and a couple glances of unidentified beaked whales. We were completely alone out here, except for a couple distant lonely fishing boats tending long lines, identified by the aligned scattered floats.
In addition to several lectures and photographic presentations that were offered throughout the day, many people enjoyed the delightful conditions on deck. And, as usual, there was a magnificent night sky in which to enjoy the waxing moon and amazing tropical view of stars (although the brightness of the moon washed out some of the dimmer stars and perhaps detracted a bit from some of the familiar constellations).
