Antarctica is the world's most remote continent - located 2,400 kilometres (1,221 nautical miles) from Australia and 4,000 kilometres (2,035 nautical miles) from South Africa - where we began our voyage. Surrounding Antarctica, and separating it from the rest of the world, is the Southern Ocean, which encompasses roughly 36 million square kilometres of water.

In short, it's big. Wide really. And our helicopter can only go so far from the ship.

So it takes a fair amount of luck for us to find the whaling fleet, especially if they know we're looking. We found them the first time by making an educated guess based on their past behaviour, and by getting a little lucky. Since then it seems they have changed from their normal whaling pattern to make it harder for us to find them. So we need some serious good luck to find them again.

We got some of that luck a couple of days ago when, just as we were ringing in the new year, the Aurora Australis (an Australian research and supply icebreaker) happened on the whalers in waters claimed by Australia. The Aurora instructed the whalers to leave, but they refused. The incident became public knowledge, along with the position of the whaling fleet.

So no problem, right? Now we know where the whalers are now, don't we? Nope. Unfortunately, we only know where they used to be, and now it has been almost three days since their last known position.

Fortunately, the actual search area is much smaller since the whalers probably won't leave the piece of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary that they have self designated as their hunting ground. Also, they can only go so far south before the hit the ice edge.

Still, it looks like we will need a little luck and some good guesswork to find the whalers. Fingers crossed everyone.