Waiting for the miracle to come

We are already on the slope of the Grand Banks, 1800 m depth and decreasing. It is still very windy and the temperature dropped last night 10ºC. The bridge has been terribly cold all night (I was told) and well into the day, so the traditional mid-survey conversation with the chief engineer about the heating took place this morning. So that’s one thing done. The ship is warm now, and with the temperature drop we realized that the thermometer that used to lie here in the main bridge was nowhere to be seen.

The sensors are already installed in the otter doors and we just need the weather to improve a bit, otherwise we cannot work. The forecast for this week is not very good. We will see soon the effect of moving forward the survey. In this area and this time of the year arriving 7-10 days sooner or later can make a difference.

Have you seen the comment my colleague Fran left about the book he is reading? Humans are tremendously anthropocentric. Although the truth is that birds can not complain about lack of attention, Fran. I can tell you this: there are many, many people who dedicate a lot of their time to birds, an awful lot indeed…

And since there are not many news onboard, I think I’ll tell you a bit more from Balcombe’s fish book.

Have you ever wondered how do fish see? Well they do see very well, and they have done so for a long, long time. There are fossils of sharks 300 million years old in which scientists found evidence of the presence of cones and rods in their retinas. Cones and rods are two types of photoreceptors. Rods are much more numerous but do not detect color. That's what cones do. So fish do not only see in color, but they see more colors than we do, because it turns out that there are several types of cones, and each type is sensitive to a particular colour spectrum range. We have three types of cones  but fish have four and they can also see ultraviolet. In fact, there are many fish species that reflect UV light, and a few years ago it was discovered that damselfish (which despite the name seem to have a temper) have facial patterns characteristic of each species, only visible with UV vision. On the same reef two species coexist, and one of them does not tolerate visitors of its own species. It has been found that they use this facial pattern to recognize other fish and decide whether to react and attack the intruder or just say good morning.

While we wait to see if we can fish or not, I leave here this photo taken in the computer lab. You see, we do not waste time.

From left to right: Nair, Antonio, Vanessa and Jose Luis. We may as well read while the miracle happens.