In our world

It’s amazing how the number of visitors has increased since we started fishing! 1500 already! Before getting entangled with other business I want to clarify that yesterday there was no pun intended with the title. It was the officers and visitors’ in the bridge fault really, because they do not help with the blog. For several days in a row I have realized while uploading the material that I did not have a title. Every time I asked for help they scattered and pretended to be busy. I have then to resort to Plan B, whose success depends on accumulated fatigue. There you go.

I am glad to hear that kids liked the Gersemia. What matters here is to arouse curiosity for other inhabitants of the sea that are not seals or whales. I am also glad there are readers as observant as Silvia, who discovered a yellowtail flounder with her eyes on the wrong side. And I'm glad that the blog is being useful to make friends too.

More than enough to do for everybody: crew members Rubén and Javier help Teo with the sorting.

Jose Luis and Antonio deal with the invertebrates

 Fifth day of fishing and it seems that we have been at it three times longer. From land it may feel liket we are “surveying-cruising” but believe me: it is not. This is not so easy. We have had in a week all the handicaps we normally accumulate in twice as long - except with the CTD, which is behaving like a champion. First it was the weather, which forced us to change the original plan of working from the westernmost point towards the East and then North. Then we snagged the gear, two days later we got a too abundant haul that kept us busy longer than expected, and today the starboard warp was suddenly a bit slack after shooting almost 3000 m of it ... nothing happened and we could finish our haul, but it was a long wait until both gear and catch were on board. Add the lack of sleep on alternate nights (if the ship stays put, we sleep, if we use the night to reach another sampling area the rolling eventually wakes you up and that will be it) and as you can see this is not for everybody.

From the left: Jose, Marta and the iSEAS prototype (upper right) at work

Vanesa and Jorge sampling roughhead grenadiers

 Last night we decided to spend today in deeper water –way deeper- and we head southeast to start working at maximum depth and move to shallower stations. To our delight it was a few degrees warmer, and a breeze from the east. Foggy, but not cold. The sun even nearly broke through the clouds for first time since the seventh haul. I was glad for the deckhands, but it did not last long: a few hours later there was a downpour.

We have been all day between 900 and 1500 m, which is a lot of depth to go fishing. And lucky day for Fergus. Our most loyal readers already know that at these depths the catch is scarce but very diverse. The blue antimoras are very common, Greenland halibut comes in small and variable amounts, among the grenadiers the roughhead is the most common, we catch also black dogfish and catsharks, but also many species of invertebrates. Teo, who is a taxonomist, has selected today two crustaceans very different from the usual assortment and from what I find on the internet, it seems they are little known.

 

If you ever need bacteria from a little fish intestinal tract, this is the way forward.

One is a gigantic amphipod called Megalanceola stephenseni. Records are scarce but boy they spread widely, from Norway to Antarctica and the Pacific. You usually have to look at amphipods with a magnifying glass, but this one you can see with naked eyes meters apart: it has got the size of a mouse.

Megalanceola stephenseni. I am lost for words

 
The other is a decapod named Munidopsis curvirostra, or squat lobster in English.

Munidopsis curvirostra. Maybe you'd prefer a smaller amphipod and a larger lobster...

And this is going to be everything for today, because I got up at 5:30 and I still have no title for this...