Nearly there

With a time difference of three hours with peninsular Spain today I am far too late to wish a good morning... Yesterday, after sending the blog material to Uxía, our librarian, the wind started to drop and a few hours later the waves were non-existent, so we had a very relaxing afternoon and I dare to say we have all recovered from the shaking of the last days. We write from 43º16.9850 – 046º04.8610 and we will arrive to the Grand Bank tonight, although for administrative reasons we will not start fishing until tomorrow.

 

You can see us in the radar screen, we are the white pentagon pointing to the Grand Bank. There are another two ships in the area, one of which is called Primavera. In the top left corner you can see Newfoundland, in grey. The blue areas are the Grand Bank (the largest) and Flemish Cap, the study area of the next survey. We are not sampling the whole Bank, though! We will work on the Tail – the southeastern corner. You can find the maps in the survey plan and the survey reports from earlier years. Finally, the 3L survey will take place between 46º – 48.5ºN, in the Grand Bank strip outside the Canadian EEZ.
 

 

Yesterday, enjoying the sudden peace after the shaking vanished, I started to read Great Waters by Sir Alister Hardy, published in 1967. This is a divulgative account of the British scientific surveys on board the Discovery, William Scoresby and Discovery II carried out between 1925 and 1950. The prose is a bit barroque compared to the current travel narrative style, but the book is heavily illustrated and includes innumerable ink drawings and even watercolours made by the author. The artistic quality of these scientists and naturalists of times past is really incredible, and I don't know what fascinates me most, if their proficiency in diverse painting and drawing techniques, or the fact that they had time to invest in such tasks. Of course, until photography became available and mainstream there was no other option than using manual illustrations, and actually many scientific expeditions counted with artists. But research and life in the 60s had a very different pace, and nevertheless there were still researchers able to publish pieces of art such as this book by Sir Alister Hardy. Actually, Simon Jennings and two colleagues of him published in 2001 Marine Fisheries Ecology, including many ink drawings by Jennings himself. I may as well send him an e-mail to ask how did he find the time. Nevertheless, watercolour paints in science divulgation books seem to be a relic of the past. What a shame.
 

On the other hand, the new technologies allow us at least to communicate within much shorter time frames (it took Sir Alister Hardy 15 years to find the time to write his book as he describes in the preface). Not having internet on board it's a bit of a drag, because our presence in the social networks would be greatly increased, for this and the many other surveys carried out by IEO and the Spanish Directorate of Fisheries. We are limited by the expense of data transmission via satellite, but with the Vizconde de Eza connected to the internet we could have live connections to show you our work, and you could see inmediately all the fascinating species we catch. And of course the blog could be updated more often, as we would see fit... those in favour of internet on board please rise your hands! I can see here 33 hands.... and how many in land?
 

Wish us luck for tomorrow!!!