Russell Ayers - 2/2/13 Awoke to less rolling this morning, get up and head out on deck to be greeted by the first sight of land in 4 days. I can see the north east part of the Freycinet peninsular, this means we will make it to our intended destination today; a long term monitoring site near Maria Island.. But first we complete a station, CTD, XBT all the usual stuff, we then redeploy the CPR and continue on our way to Maria Island. The sun is out, and the crew take the opportunity to get out on deck to take some photos and enjoy the sight of albatross and dolphins that have decided to follow the ship. It is a beautiful site to see so many albatross in one place, over 100! On arrival to Maria island a huge pod of dolphins, at least 50 strong, ride the wash of the ship and can be seen breaching the water and generally frolicking around the ship, as we slowly steam into position to run our final 4 stations for the voyage. 4pm, we deploy the CTD at a shallow depth <30m then head out to complete the second and third stations, on the third station we have a bit of fun by deploying some polystyrene cups that members of the crew have decorated we attach them atop the CTD and drop it to bellow 900m! the immense pressure at that depth squishes the cups down to about a third there original size. Really cool! The final CTD drop is done a little further east; I am a little sad that the voyage is almost over, as it feels as though we only just began.