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Postmedia columnist Daphne Bramham is on an 18-day expedition that crosses the notoriously rough Drake Passage from the Falkland Islands to South Georgia — known as the Serengeti of the Southern Ocean — to Antarctica.

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ELSEHUL BAY, South Georgia — Humpback whales are the size of school buses. Minkes, by comparison, are small … for whales that is.

All of which is to say that Ari Friedlaender’s work seems almost ridiculously dangerous. To get the data he needs, Friedlaender must be close enough to touch humpback and minke whales.

Depending on the day, he and his team will attach one of two kinds of transmitters to the backs of whales to monitor their movements and feeding patterns, or they will be taking small skin and blubber samples.

The biopsy samples are used to determine how many are pregnant, how frequently they are reproducing, and how a population trajectory is changing over time.

Friedlaender’s team also use drones flown from zodiacs to get an estimate of the length of an animal as well as the width, which gives an idea of the whales’ body condition.