fish and birds and farewells...

Many times during this trip we have seen birds of various kinds and we have the opportunity to learn a little about them from people who know more than we do. Once before we had red footed boobies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-footed_Booby flying along the ship, and today we learned that the ones that we had seen were the brown morph. Today we saw several of the white morph variety. These birds move along the ship because of the sea creatures that are stirred up as our ship passes through the water. Some types of birds are known to stay to the bow of the ship and others tend to follow along the stern -- it depends on what they want to eat. There were dozens today right outside our window and they were chasing the flying fish. It was fun to watch them swoop and dive and occasionally catch a fish in flight.

We learned a couple of days ago that we will be saying goodbye to about 40 of our crew when they leave us in Hong Kong to return for a few months to their families. Many of these folks are people we never see -- engineers or maintenance people from the engine room, or butchers and bakers in the kitchen, but two of the fellows who are leaving have been very good to us, so we went to see them today to say farewell. It's sad to see them go, but we have to be happy for them that they are returning to their families. Today was also our cabin steward Linda's birthday so we helped her to celebrate a little and contributed along with others on our deck to a cake she could share with her friends in the crew.

We passed through the Paracel Islands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracel_Islands today. They have a long history of disputes over ownership. Ship's time is currently 2215 and our location is:
Latitude: 19 degrees 53.3' N
Longitude: 113 degrees 6.9' E
Course: 30 degrees

We should arrive in Hong Kong in just under 10 hours. We participated in Earth Hour on the ship along with much of the rest of the world by turning off most of the lights, including the outside ones. I have to say it did give me pause to think about traveling at 22 knots on a nearly moonless night with no lights!