Here comes the sun

The sun! It’s shining!!! We've gone west and we got out of the fog. Today it’s two weeks since we left Vigo and it is our seventh day of fishing. Yesterday we took eight very nice hauls – or rather nice, depending on how do you look at them. The technical part was great, both on the Vizconde and the biologist crews, there were no personal mishaps or breakdowns, but the catches were very low even though we spent the day in one of the busiest strata of past years. We still need to take a few samples there but I have little hope for improvement.

Sunny afternoon. YESSSSSSS!!!!!!

This morning we finished another stratum, in which we traditionally got small catches and, boy, this year we have to record catches by piece rather than weight. Big and beautiful cod females, but very few, as few as one, two, three and four. Luckily we do not have to pay the diesel with the catch revenue or we would stay here for the rest of our lives.

Cristina sorting the catch

Lucía sexing American plaice

 But let's solve some doubts, which is one of our goals. Alfonso, thank you very much for writing. I'm glad you like what we do, but I do not do it alone, it would be impossible. We are 35 people team, and thanks to everybody's work we can do the survey and publish the blog.

I can assure you all that we have not seen either giant squid or sea monsters swimming under the boat. The ship has several echosounders that detect if there is anything between the boat and the seabed. We spent many hours a day looking at the monitors for the echosounders and the sensors in the fishing gear and we have not seen monsters. Yet. Or fish, in fact. At night the officers keep watch, and if they’d had seen anything they would have told us. Of course it all depends too on what a monster is for each of us.

As for storms, we escape from them. We need to optimize ship time. The ship is subscribed to a weather service that publishes the forecast for several days and 3-hour intervals. Each forecast includes wind, pressure and wave height prediction. Every day we look at the forecast to know where is the closest area with the better weather.

Weather forecast for tomorrow at 09:00. Our study area lies in the rectangle 46ºN-53ºW, 46ºN-47ºW, 42ºN-53ºW, 42ºN-47ºW.

Today there are two photos here that you owe to Teo, who has taught me how to handle the camera software to take pictures from the magnifying glass. They are the dorsal and ventral sides of an ophiura. They are echinoderms, like starfish and sea urchins. They have five very thin arms, so they are easily distinguished from starfish.

Ophiura sarsi, dorsal view. Notice the spines and plates on the arms.

Ophiura sarsi, ventral view. Here you can see its mouth and, er, anus. The serrated plates are the bucal shields

There were also hermit crabs, Pagurus arcuatus. Hermit crabs have a soft abdomen and use empty shells of other species as shelter. The crustaceans do not grow throughout the year because their exoskeleton prevents it. But once a year they shed it and grow quite a lot in a short time. And hermit crabs have no choice but to find a new shell. Somewhere I read or heard that this is increasingly difficult due to the business built on empty shells for aquariums and other purposes. We humans leave behind a path of destruction wherever we go.

A homeless Pagurus arcuatus.