A starlight in the gloom

Another full day, still sampling the slope, weather better than yesterday wave-wise but hardly any breaks from clouds and fog. A starlight in the gloom is what I'd like to see, a clear night...Unfortunately I do not have much time for the blog, have spent the day counting fish, as to say, and if I close my eyes I can only see numbers and trend plots. Nevertheless and before I forget once again I’d like to recommend the microalgae blog written by my colleague Fran from IEO in Vigo. It is very cool work. You can find it in http://fitopasion.com/

As you can imagine our samples today were very similar to those yesterday, although catches have been a bit lower. In one of the hauls came several species I selected for the blog and I am having quite a lot of trouble finding some curiosities about them.

This octopus, my first choice, belongs to the genera Granelodone, and this is nearly as much as I can say, apart from the fact that a female of a related species living in an aquarium was observed to brood her eggs for over 4 years. 

Granelodone sp

 

We have also caught this sponge of the Geodia genera. Sponges are very tricky to identify and more often than not it is necessary to reach for the microscope to look at their spicules, which are tiny structures made of calcium or silica that form the sponge skeletons. Geodia it is, then. This species in the picture is coarse to the touch, but the interior is softer than the external cover, which looks like a crust when you cut the sponge open. Leys and Lauzon (1998) estimated that deep sea sponges grow at a rate of 0.7 to 5.6 cm a year. Sponge aggregations act like meeting points for many species that depend of them for different purposes at certain points in their life cycles. Unfortunately sponges are very fragile and vulnerable to human activities. There has been an important international effort for years to map their distribution and close certain areas for their conservation. My colleague Javier Murillo, who has been now in Canada for several years knows a lot about this. Rai has told me that there are several Geodia species in the Grand Bank but three of them are much more abundant, actually they make up 94% of the invertebrate biomass in the region. They like the quiet depths greater than 1200 m.

Geodia sp

I am going to stop talking about the fauna to move on to the Vizconde inhabitants. The biologists are busy, either sampling fish or going through the data. The crew is also finishing a thousand tasks. The deckhands have started cleaning the ship, our Vizconde is going to be quite a sight when we arrive to St. John’s.

I must mention as well the ongoing joke among the crew for the past two days because I misnamed -again- two deckhands in one of the pictures. I wrote Javier’s (from La Guardia) name but he actually was Suso. My apologies then, Suso and family. It has been corrected and here is a picture of both Javier and Suso to demonstrate that they both exist, they are two different people and do not look like each other at all, specially in plenty of light, without the oilskins, helmets, and within one meter. 



Javier from La Guardia to the left and Suso to the right. Very unlike. In the fog, with little sleep, the oilskins, helmets and from the back, is a different story.



 

Two departure pictures, Adriana’s team and a quiz. As you can see Nair does not look a day older despite being one year older than two days ago.

In the far background Iñaki and Marta, Adriana and Nair in the foreground, Rai in invertebrate world in the background to the right.

The quiz:

In this photo there are a shearwater and a whale. Guess which is which. Photo: Iñaki Franco.

 Off to bed. Night!