Lat - 55' 28.86S
Long - 51' 30.95W
Water Depth - 4800m
Speed - 10 knots
It's been a busy few days, so sorry for no update! After leaving Punta Arenas within 30hrs we were sampling on Burdwood Bank for Laura and my project. We immediately put a trawl in at 300m and came back with a wealth of corals (fossil and live) as well as a handful of other interesting critters (starfish, urchins, shrimp), then went on to do a few more not so successful trawls and CTD casts. Weather has not been great, choppy, 50 knot winds and 20ft seas, but this boat rides amazingly well, you wouldn't realise the weather is quite so bad outside until you look out the window.
Yesterday was our last day on our sample site and our final sample was a trawl at 800m depth. Nearing the end of the trawl, as we were bringing it up, the tension on the wire spiked to 8400lbs (normal for that depth is around 2500lbs). Immediately getting the winch operator to pay out wire the tension then 'pinged' to 1000lbs and luckily the wire did not break (when you have a trawl on the bottom you have to be careful not to anchor the ship by getting it caught on things - this is why we go to such lengths to choose good looking sites from maps and sensors). I was determined I had caught the net on something on the bottom (rock?), it had pulled the net and finally broke free, letting out all the animals we had just collected with it.
Pessimistic I didn't even wake people up before the trawl came up to help sort. As the MTs started to bring the trawl on deck, they stopped, chatted and one of them came running back to fetch extra line. I went to the back and peered over the side. there was the net, bulging and straining with the amount of material in it. One of he largest hauls of corals I have ever collected then came on deck. 12 hours later, the 8 people who aided in it's sorted had finally finished with the initial work (sorting, preserving, drying). I now have over 100 individuals of 3 different species of coral (one very rarely seen here) as well as numerous other deep-sea critters. There are some pictures soon to go up on the cruise website below.
What a wonderful way to end a sample site. Thanks King Neptune.
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Cruise Website -
3 comments:
Congrats on the big trawl that didn't get away!!!! Again your blog and the trip website have been very enjoyable to follow. Keep up the great work!! DW
whoah. nice to pass on a verbal hello today! S brought out antartica onesie and a palmer station t-shirt today for the kids. i told him my parents had gotten the T for bella already and he said "sucks when i don't even have the omonopoly on antartica stuff anymore!"
sorry for all the misspellings and typos in my post!
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