Sunday morning

First of all a word of apology to English speaking birders.. I realise yesterday that I had forgotten to insert in the text the latin name of the birds we had seen... Most abundant are Puffinus gravis, there are also a few fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) and the juvenile changing cover was Sula basana.

It's the weekend and we haven't notice the difference... funny, seven days ago people was bored to death of watching movies and now we haven't got an spare minute... time flies, tomorrow Sunday it will be two weeks since we left Vigo and the countdown for the end of the survey will start.

But before I start rambling about today I'll tell you that on Friday we caugth 5500  kg of fish, 5000 of which was made up by our target species. Most abundant were yellowtail flounder (nearly 2000 kg), American plaice (1130) and capelin (1100). The remaining species had catches below 500 kg. Those of you planning to splash this summer in the Mediterranean do not think for a sec that you wil see any of this fish... they really like cold water, you know. According to our brand new sensors, that are working very well so far, bottom temperature in the area ranged from -1.2 to 1.0ºC... Today Saturday, on the other hand we have gone to deeper waters and sea bottom temperature went up to 6ºC, so much nicer, don't you think? 

You all know that at the time of writing is way to early to give figures, but in my notes for the hauls, seven in total it says “redfish, redfish, American plaice, American plaice, redfish, redfish, redfish”, so you can fathom what will I be about tomorrow. Although tomorrow there will be a guided tour of the engine room and I will try some unsuspecting visitor to write about the experience so I get a day off. 

Bernardo, our colleague from IEO branch in Santander brought with him a tiny and fantastic camera with him, I'd love to get one of those for my birthday, wait, who wrote that, and he really is giving it a go, unlike other people who buy themselves very cool cameras with a million functions and keep them in their bags. I think we are all playing our part in Bernardo's recording of ship activity. The camera is so small and mounted on a monopod with a sucker, so it can be installed anywhere and you wouldn't notice. And Bernardo walks around silent as a cat... Maybe he will upload some videos after the survey for you to see, because sending them over to Uxía for uploading from land would be madly expensive. In the picture today you can see Jose, our Second Mate, switching off Bernardo's camera after the gear had been hauled (Bernardo had to go for his second watch). A historical day, as it is the first time one of the officers is pictured in this blog... and I am afraid you will not see any other of them unless you come on board the R/V Vizconde de Eza for a visit. 

Here are our positions for Saturday, without more ado:

L33: 42º 59.29 -50º 52.88

L34: 42º 58.45 -50º 43.75

L35: 43º 05.94 -50º 40.10

L36: 43º 05.81 -50º 25.87

L37: 42º 56.13 -50º 17.25

L38: 42º 45.73 -50º 07.99

L39: 42º 50.52 -

50º 20.90

And this is all for the day, folks! 

P/S. To all readers and specially Juan's relatives (Juan from Villajoyosa, the onlooker in yesterday's picture): the guy is working very hard and eating accordingly.