The passenger

How's life, earth-bound creatures? We have had another very busy day. We are burning the midnight oil, so we will be brief. We have spent the day fishing on the slope. Each haul took about 3 to 3.5 hours, so we had time to take just five of them. Considering how difficult the terrain is, and that they were all technically perfect, we can describe them as beautiful hauls, even though the catch has been tiny. Numbers for four of them give a total catch below 200 kg. On the other hand, most of it was Greenland halibut.

Do not dare to think we have spent the day arm-crossed just because there wasn't a lot of fish. The biologists have been helping Nair to type in the data, and as the Captain said, they were so fast that they nearly overtook the hauls... data from haul 124 were being typed as haul 125 was sliding down to the deck. In the bridge, the computer were the report is being written was on fire, and mails are continuously exchanged with St. John's to make sure our Vizconde is properly serviced and gets everything it needs for the next survey: fuel, food, new warp wire, a pilot to enter the harbour... in the middle of all this chaos some people finds the time to screw their backs playing ping-pong and are now walking with their backs bended a good 45º.

With so much happening we haven't had the chance to give space to our passenger, who has been flying about lately. The Icelandic birding mafia has been mobilised for its identification and it seems that the little birdie is a Hirundo rustica erythrogaster (the subspecies being likely due to our proximity to the American continent). Every now and then it flies around the ship and even enters the bridge.

We have also seen several cetaceans today, the Zyphiidae again, and a dolphin pod that has spent some time with us while Nair was casting the CTD. We probably would have seen a lot more if we hadn't spent the survey packed in fog. This morning we nearly saw more cetaceans than fish...but now it is time to scrape some sleep, so here are our positions for today:

L121:	45º 11.12 -	048º 40.30
L122:	45º 01.63 -	048º 45.50
L123:	45º 57.94 -	048º 51.44
L124:	44º 56.37 -	048º 50.44
L125:	44º 57.57 -	048º 45.07

See you all tomorrow!!!