Everybody wants the same thing

Hello everybody! Today the workload with the fish has lessened considerably... we have just finished five deepwater tows, with rather small catches. The atmosphere on board reminds of the crossing one month ago, with people watching TV series in their spare time and breaks between hauls. These days everybody wants the same thing: reaching land. In the main bridge, however, everything remains the same. Hauls need to be shot, watched and hauled, the data screened, the blog written and besides this is the week in which paperwork pours over the Captain's mail.

Even though permission to enter Canadian waters is asked for well before the survey, we must ask again a few days before we need to enter. We also had to fill a form declaring the personal electronic equipment we carry, send a list with the names of everybody on board, indicating who signs off and who doesn't, who is leaving the country and when. There is as well the ballast water reporting form, where we are asked if we have ballast water, what do we intend to do with it, details of our management system for it, previous harbour, next three harbours, and lots of details. This is due to the generalised problem of alien species invading every sea in the world. Ships take ballast water in one sea and release it in another, with all the creatures they took in. If the alien species do not survive in their new environment nothing happens, but if they like their new home they become a serious ecological issue of very difficult solution. In our case there is no problem because the Vizconde de Eza uses its fuel tanks as ballast, it does not carry ballast water.

Ballast or no ballast, the highlight of the week is that as we hauled the fourth haul, several Zyphiidae cetaceans (sorry, I don't know their English names) came for a visit. So close they were to the ship that we couldn't take many pictures because the cranes were always on the way. The cetaceans were at the stern, rigth behind the codend. We have seen very well their bulbous head, the snout, as in dolphins, the dorsal fin, and they looked like 6-8 meters long. Checking our guidebook (which is not great), the most plausible option is the Hyperoodon ampullatus. We enclose the best pics we got, knowing that they are very bad, but maybe somebody with a better knowledge of these animals can confirm the identification? The book says this species is very curious and likes to approach stationary ships. They live in deep Atlantic waters -right where we are.

And as for our catch today... it has been rather poor. Black dogfish, roughhead grenadier, Greenland halibut, several spynitail rays, huge some of them, and a few kilos of witch flounder. Our positions today:

L110:	45º 53.00 -	047º 42.04
L111:	45º 48.94 -	047º 50.72
L112:	45º 45.94 -	047º 49.57
L113:	45º 41.59 -	047º 42.37
L114:	45º 36.54-	047º 53.59

And this is all for the day, folks!