Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Station AA - the long one....

Lat - 63 03.27S
Long - 61 35.25W
Temp - -0.9C

Station AA (aka Coral Nirvana) tested me yesterday. The first trawl we got back brought up a measly 23 corals and a slight panic started to set it. I needed at least 50, and 50 females at that. So we sent another trawl down and luckily this one produced, with as many corals as we usually get at this station - in the 200s - so more than I needed, and enough to be choosey about the ones I used - woo hoo! I've just got up from a fantastic 7hr sleep after a full 31hrs straight of collecting water, corals and extracting babies, now it's almost time to start getting ready to move those babies into their respective temperature assignments for the next ten days. 550 little ones now live in the cold van, and all seem happy and have started to roam their tanks.

So it was a trying night on many levels, over 15hrs inside a -0.5C cold van, not to mention that I may be done taking photos for the rest of the cruise. I had my camera in my pocket while out on deck and for the first time I decided to throw it in a plastic bag to protect it (I had forgotten to do that up until now). Well, unfortunately the bag filled with muddy water and several hours later I discovered my camera sitting in a bag of muddy water. The ETs have taken it away from me to dry it out, but no-one is hopeful it will recover - if you've never had the joy of rinsing your camera under a tap I don't recommend it. I was just starting to love that particular camera too. At least its last photos were of the wonderful whales......

Coral babies all tucked up in their vials. Imagine this picture times 550 and that was my night...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ooohhhhh! Not your camera--and when you were doing something that seems so wise. You have been taking wonderful photos with it. i love how you illustrate your blog!

Nicola said...

oh, that sucks. man, rhian, you have some crappy luck and the best attitude. can you send some of that to me when you get home? ;)