Good morning to all readers and especially to those in Krakow, Missouri and Princenton! This is the first day since we left Vigo in which the sun is shining.
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| Reward for early birds: sunrise in the Grand Bank |
Hopefully you have all started the weekend very well. We hope to kiss goodbye the awful cold that has tortured us this week. Truth is, it has affected the atmosphere on board, or at least my impression is that people were missing most of the time.. maybe lying under several blankets between shifts?
In the main bridge it has been different. Less visitors than usual and also less talking. We usually have heated debates about all kinds of issues, ranging from Rafael Nadal to the importance of sponge gardens for fish population dynamics -some people still think sponges are useless!-, and from the problems in Cambados to access this blog – Mariña, can you read us?- to the toothfish fishery in the South Atlantic. Anyway, we get up so early that by eight in the morning we have reached conversational effervescence, sometimes to the surprise of the visitor who has got up so recently that cannot yet remember his name. But these cold days we have shrunk and have been rather silent, each of us deep into our own hypothermia, although there is nevertheless who walks around in shorts and t-shirts. There is people for everything, I suppose. Luckily the kitchen has been generous with soup and casseroles this week, and of the two options A) pour the soup over myself to heat up and B) have it, I have chosen B, because they were delicious every time.
Anyway, today was not as cold, although this was hardly felt in the working deck. But there was much more to do, with 13 tons of redfish to get through, yes you read well, 13000 kg of redfish, most of it caught in two hauls; plus several hundred kg of American plaice and yellowtail flounder. The rest of the species have been caught in very small amounts even though we have kept to our plan of working from deeper (1200 m) to shallower (50 m) waters to sample all the target species. The last haul came with a lot of holothurians, probably more than yesterday, but instead of being accompanied by ctenophorans, there were hundreds of Buccinum snails. And yellowtail flounder. I haven't got the figures at the time of writing, but I will check them tomorrow first thing in the morning. We haven't had any problems and our seven hauls went smoothly. We have 79 valid hauls, 43 to go in 8 days. See how it goes.
Before the holothurian invasion we got another surprise, especially football lovers, because the match was not broadcasted on the radio. After hearing the results I am selfishly glad, because having people throwing themselves over board would have taken time we do not have. Besides, I really dislike journalists shouting endless- and hysterically “goooooaaaaaallll”. Nevertheless I think I speak for all the “non-footballers” if I say we are sorry about the double disappointment suffered by our survey colleagues. So sorry that we will dedicate to them the blog today, so they feel better. Guys, aren't you happier already? Go on then, and get those pins to find where we are....
In the main bridge it has been different. Less visitors than usual and also less talking. We usually have heated debates about all kinds of issues, ranging from Rafael Nadal to the importance of sponge gardens for fish population dynamics -some people still think sponges are useless!-, and from the problems in Cambados to access this blog – Mariña, can you read us?- to the toothfish fishery in the South Atlantic. Anyway, we get up so early that by eight in the morning we have reached conversational effervescence, sometimes to the surprise of the visitor who has got up so recently that cannot yet remember his name. But these cold days we have shrunk and have been rather silent, each of us deep into our own hypothermia, although there is nevertheless who walks around in shorts and t-shirts. There is people for everything, I suppose. Luckily the kitchen has been generous with soup and casseroles this week, and of the two options A) pour the soup over myself to heat up and B) have it, I have chosen B, because they were delicious every time.
Anyway, today was not as cold, although this was hardly felt in the working deck. But there was much more to do, with 13 tons of redfish to get through, yes you read well, 13000 kg of redfish, most of it caught in two hauls; plus several hundred kg of American plaice and yellowtail flounder. The rest of the species have been caught in very small amounts even though we have kept to our plan of working from deeper (1200 m) to shallower (50 m) waters to sample all the target species. The last haul came with a lot of holothurians, probably more than yesterday, but instead of being accompanied by ctenophorans, there were hundreds of Buccinum snails. And yellowtail flounder. I haven't got the figures at the time of writing, but I will check them tomorrow first thing in the morning. We haven't had any problems and our seven hauls went smoothly. We have 79 valid hauls, 43 to go in 8 days. See how it goes.
Before the holothurian invasion we got another surprise, especially football lovers, because the match was not broadcasted on the radio. After hearing the results I am selfishly glad, because having people throwing themselves over board would have taken time we do not have. Besides, I really dislike journalists shouting endless- and hysterically “goooooaaaaaallll”. Nevertheless I think I speak for all the “non-footballers” if I say we are sorry about the double disappointment suffered by our survey colleagues. So sorry that we will dedicate to them the blog today, so they feel better. Guys, aren't you happier already? Go on then, and get those pins to find where we are....
L75:
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43º 37.13 -
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049º 03.20
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L76:
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43º 37.94 -
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049º 05.45
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L77:
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43º 41.97 -
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049º 05.83
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L78:
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42º 42.92 -
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049º 11.90
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L79:
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43º 35.67 -
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049º 24.15
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L80:
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43º 46.00 -
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049º 20.49
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L81:
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43º 50.57
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049º 26.76
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