Food for thought

Good afternoon, earthlings. My idea of publishing in the mornings is not quite working, is it? And the afternoon is gone too.

Yesterday we did six hauls but we caught very little. In the last two hauls there was some black dogfish and halibut. Today we started rather close to our last haul and at the time of writing we had already taken three deep water hauls, and we have finished the day in shallower strata. So far the catch today was more abundant than usual for this depth. In fact they were even more abundant than catches from some of the shallow water hauls. The Grand Bank has changed an awful lot.

"Do you remember how much fish used to be here?" "Yeah, I know, I know...."

  Fortunately, what does not change is the Vizconde’s kitchen. Today there was baked cod with potatoes, vegetable lasagne and custards for dessert. For dinner we had mushroom – aubergine and courgette soup, pasta with monkfish and octopus, lamb ribs, salat and rice with vegetables. Everyday there are some courses to choose from. The problem is that most of the time there is so much choice that if you like everything it is awful to decide what are you NOT going to eat. Very varied fruit is also widely available, and sausages and dairy products to have a snack between meals. On Sundays there is a parade of tapas with the main meals. In short, we are on tenterhooks. Luckily we have to work between meals.

These are the men who keep us alive. From the left: Santomé, Héctor, Suso and Manuel.

The arena

The victim of our spare time.

Despite the difficulties associated with dragging our full stomachs all over the ship, we are making progress with our sampling and we already have covered 10 of the 41 strata and have partly sampled another 17 strata.  The rest remain untouched, but it won’t be long before we get there.

Today some beautiful fish came in the catch. One of them is called Caristius fasciatus. It seems that they have a wide distribution in the Northwest Atlantic, but it is not easy to find them. In this survey they have been recorded only eight times since 2002, counting this year, and each year the catch is just one or two individuals, except for 2004, when 4 fish were caught.

Caristius fasciatus

I am going to save the other fish for later, just in case, because in the next few days I will have to devote more time to the survey report and less to the blog ...