Better luck

Dear readers: what a day!! Amazing. Sun shining all day and the crowd showing off their tan, watching the sunset, smooth seas, we finally managed to get a few pictures of the cooks, we got seven beautiful perfect hauls and, best of all, a sperm whale that came as we hauled the second tow to take a look around!!! It didn't stay long with us, but the memory will remain forever. I had never seen one of them before. In a latter haul we saw another cetacean, maybe Ziphius.

Manuel, Bouzas, Santomé (up) and Antonio, keeping the kitchen busy (from left to right).

The spermwhale besides the Vizconde de Eza and just before the inmersion.

Sperm whales, appart from having a very peculiar body, with that huge head and disproportionally small lower jaw are very interesting animals and from which we got lots to learn about. The head size is perfect to store a complex system of conducts filled with spermaceti (hence the name of the whale). This sustance can be solidifed and liquefied by means of temperature change at will, depending of the desired depth. A density increase (spermacety solidification) makes immersion easier, a very convenient skill for an animal that likes depths about 500 m. Besides, they can stay under water for a long time by keeping to a minimum their metabolism to minimise oxygen consumption.

We have had also at rather close range all day an ugly ship called Titan, it has been in the radar for days. We don't know what are they doing, they haven't contacted us either but they may think we are mad as hatters, cruising about without a fixed bearing, now at 8 knots, now at 3, suddenly we stop for anything between 10 to 45 minutes (the CTDs)... you get the picture. Imagine the map with the pins was more accurate and could actually show our trail. Unless you know what our purpose here is you would probably think we are barking mad or that we lost something and are looking for it. Which is, in a second thought, what we are actually doing: looking for the lost cod. Anyway. We also crossed our path with one of the crab traps guys from St. John's, but luckily we did not get on each other's way.

With all this rambling I nearly forgot to tell you that in the podium today we have American plaice, yellowtail flounder and cod! Yellowtail flounder has surprised us this year. It was the only species with very abundant and constant presence, increasing over the past years slowly but surely. Actually every year we wondered if changing the survey name to “Limanda” -the Spanish name for yellowtail flounder. And suddenly there is much less of it. It is going to be difficult to pull up the numbers, we have very few tows left in “Yellowtail Territory”, from now on what we want is to see a lot of Greenland halibut, which is also very scarce. We have hardly caught 50 kg this morning. The Grand Bank is not what it used to be. If fishermen from just 100 years ago could see it they would call us everything in the dictionary.

Nevertheless there is a lot of work ahead until we analyse the data we are collecting and time to draw conclusions arrives. For the time being here are our hauls for the day, but keep in mind that numbers can be misleading, as the number of valid hauls is 91 and therefore we have 31 to go:

L89:	44º 00.64 -	048º 51.95
L90:	44º 01.60 -	048º 52.45
L91:	44º 05.73 -	049º 04.05
L92:	44º 03.03 -	049º 14.37
L93:	44º 08.75 -	049º 00.72
L94:	44º 10.79 -	049º 18.07
L95:	44º 16.90	049º 11.24