Assault to the Grand Bank

Morning, readers! The blog has another guest today, so I give you Rai!

Rai, taxonomist and ocasional blogger

Right, we have reached the second half of the survey, both in time and hauls... who would have imagined in late May when we left Vigo, that we would be so well positioned to reach our goals. Except for the survey leader we all had our moment of doubt.

Today the day was somewhat hard, meteorologically speaking. Last night(Wednesday to Thursday) a storm with 40 knots notherly winds and 4-5 m waves crossed our path, making sleep rather difficult.

This had several consequences, the first of them the lack of rest because we were shaken to exhaustion, the second was the delay of the first haul by one, hour, the third the temperature drop, down to 5ºC today Thursday, with a much lower thermal sensation, especially on deck but also in the main bridge and working deck. It was rather amusing to go to the main bridge and see the Captain, First Mate and survey leader with the zipper of their fleeces closed all the way up to their noses, scarfs and woollen hats down to their eyebrows... looking like the Dalton brothers and getting ready for a bank assault... the Grand Bank assault!

Let me know to take a small pause, as we write the last haul is coming in, and there is certain expectation in the air. We changed shifts today and the team in the evening shift counts only four members... luckily there is not too much fish and they will be able to do the sampling without problems. Off you go, guys!!!!

As for work the day has been rather good. We got all the planned hauls, seven, although the gear actually was shot eight times. But we had to mark one of the hauls as void because the trawl got entangled and it was hauled on board too early -17 minutes, when the absolutely minimum towing time is 20 minutes. Catches have been very diverse. The first haul consisted of a mix of redifsh and cod – and by the way, we got today the biggest cod in the survey: 1.22 m and 22.4 kg. In the latter hauls we got a hundred kg of holothurians, echinoderm invertebrates also known as sea cucumbers and cousin of sea urchins and starfish. There are small fisheries for this invertebrate. Another invertebrate that came in the trawl in very large amounts is a ctenophoran species, a pelagic animal similar to jellyfish whose body is mostly made of water and equipped with special structures called ctenidios which allow it to swim. I didn't think these animals had any predators until I became this year part of the stomach sampling team, but it looks like cod and other fish are eating them.

And now is time to get those pins out of the drawer and find on the map our positions for the day:

L67:	43º 21.72 -	049º 25.21
L68:	43º 25.96 -	049º 24.71
L69:	43º 35.54 -	049º 31.78
L70:	42º 46.74 -	049º 34.21
L71:	43º 52.88 -	049º 41.23	- the void haul
L72:	43º 54.95 -	049º 43.54
L73:	43º 58.40 -	049º 41.60
L74:	43º 37.13	049º 30.66

See you tomorrow!