Iceland's National Day - Til hamingju, Ísland!

Today is Iceland's National Day. I wanted an special entry for today but we had some issues with the internet connection last night (hence this delay). But I don't want to let the opportunity to congratulate Iceland first thing in the morning (it is not even 7 am here), so here we go, Iceland, I wish you a sunny National Day and a lovely summer. Congratulations!

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Once more is way too late to write. I took the pictures fairly early but I have also started to work on the survey report and things are a bit manic. We have been fishing on the slope and (please complete the sentence) …………………

Exactly, very early start, thousands of meters of warp, few hauls, black dogfish, Greenland halibut, antimoras, grenadiers, some chimeras… but today the catches were larger than usual and guess what, lacking the figures for the last haul, Greenland halibut was the most abundant species today. One thing is for sure: the report is going to be surprising.

We shot the first haul at 6 this morning and to this day I wonder how the deckhands can be so cheerful at that time and in this weather. I went out to take some pictures and walked back in within a minute, frozen to death. 

6:00 a.m. in the Grand Bank. Rubén, Paco, Juan and Luis

The sun came out, to our delight, but it was short lived. At least we caught the Greenland halibut. The animals below came in the hauls today. Yet another sculpin, a small one actually called Cottunculus microps. The female lays few and large eggs (not enough for an omelette though), about 200. This species is not edible (to us) and therefore it seems there is very little information aobut it. They eat invertebrates, picnogonids among them. Remember the sea spiders? They probably are an adquired taste.

Cottunculus microps

 

 

In the second haul we got several of these beautiful octopuses, that were very lively considering the circumstances. They belonged to the Bathypolypus genera. Cephalopods in general are very, very interesting. They got very developed eyes, similar to ours, although the optical nerve runs behind the retina, rather than in front of it. These deep water octopuses lack an ink bag (useless in the darkness) and they also have reduced offspring, just a few hundreds. Jonathan Bird wrote his thesis on these animasl and he says that the B. arcticus female broods her eggs for 400 days! Besides, she stops eating and her body goes into feeding the offspring, so I guess they become orphans at an early age. I am not sure whether this is good or bad parenting. In any case, this thesis sounds like much more fun than mine, which kept me stuck to the computer for years.

Bathypolypus reaching for the ruler

 

No more animals today but here you are, a picture of Paco and the gear just because, I liked the angle. And Alba and her team, I finally got them all before they dispersed.

Alba, Roi, Eduardo, Venicio y Andrés.

Look our mad route over the Grand Bank to do the sampling! Now I wish I had taken every day a picture of the map and kept the weather forecast to overlap all the pairs and see how the survey has turned into a race against the lows. Here is an idea for next year…

Port? Starboard? North? South? Where can we have a couple of good days?

And we celebrated Nair`s birthday, with cake and gifts, thank you very much. Plenty of very handy and wildly creative people on board. She got some artisanal presents and even though she could not be with her family, I think she has had a very good day.

Thanks to Silvia, Luis and Ivan for your comments. Ivan, I thought you had forgotten us. Silvia, thanks for the kind thoughts! They will be passed along… Luis, thanks for reading and writing us daily.

See you tomorrow!