Saturday, November 19, 2011

James Cook vs mysteries of the deep (1-0)

We have been around Coral seamount for a week now. It’s time to have a look at what's been done already. We have had an impressive number of events: 1 wire test, 1 test of acoustic interferences between instruments, 4 ROV Kiel6000 dives (see Remotely Operated Vehicle blog post), 3 SHRIMP dives, 2 HYBIS dives, 8 CTD (see CTD and Anni’s microbes), 1 ring net deployment (see Clare and the Jellyfish), 1 microprofiler (mixing; see Overnight work), 6 boxcorer deployments and 7 megacorer deployments to collect sediments (see upcoming blog posts...), 1 multibeam survey (see How to map the seafloor), a lot of seawater collected and filtered, a lot of organisms and samples labelled and preserved. We have still not unlocked all the mysteries of Coral seamount though. Over the last few days the weather has frustrated our progress and we are yet to see what lives on the top of the seamount. So tonight and tomorrow we will attempt to tow SHRIMP, our towed camera system, up the upper slopes and onto the summit where we have seen a strange hole in the top of the seamount with the echosounders..........

We've been happy to see many fur seals, 2 Sperm whales, hundreds of albatrosses, white-chinned petrels, cape petrels, terns, prions and other seabirds.

Air temperature (daytime) range: 7 and 13°C.
Seawater temperature: around 10°C at the surface, 4°C at the seafloor
Area covered (latitude, longitude): [41°20’:41°28’] South, [42°50’:42°57’] East

© L. Rolley
© L. Rolley
© L. Rolley