Give me an “I”, give me an “F”……

This is an angle that is very rarely talked about but I thought it was something that folks may find interesting: The reintegration into society! It sounds strange but we have lived a very intense and unusual life for 5 weeks. There are some strange things that you notice when you get back onto land.

The first is almost immediate, the lack of movement. Even in port the vessel is always moving. That 1^st step onto land, a stable surface, is very strange. It feels unnervingly still, you don’t quite trust it. The movement now seems internal. You will find yourself swaying slightly. I feel it most when I am sitting still. The strange thing is that those who were on the boat with you will likely be swaying in time with you. We are all strangely harmonised. When this is very extreme you can even start to feel land sick!

The next thing that you notice is your inability to handle crowds. Suddenly there are people everywhere…..and they are strangers! For so long you have known everyone you meet, they politely greet you, hold the door for you or you both instinctively known what side to step to. Suddenly there are people everywhere and you don’t seem able to get out of their way without getting in someone else’s. This also extends to navigating traffic; I’m terrible at getting over the road when I am fresh off a boat.

It’s such a treat to walk in one direction for more than a few meters. I will often get the urge to walk anywhere just for the sense of freedom. When we came into port this time we were about 40min walk from the town centre. Although it was dark and raining I walked the whole way for the sense of freedom (others would have you believe that I got lost in the port but my story sounds better).

The next thing you notice are smells. Salty air really masks smells and even then those on a boat are quite limited; diesel and grease, that day’s dinner and the fishy smell of samples. Suddenly there are smells everywhere.

I’m also aware that I have been conditioned. As much as it may offend my sense of free will, I have become Pavlov’s dog. I am suddenly hungry at the times the meals were on the boat. I and others have also confessed to waking up at 4am ready for an ROV shift. I was once staying in a hotel that had a fire alarm in the middle of the night. When I awoke fully I was standing in front of the wardrobe having pulled everything out looking for my life jacket. I am clearly so well trained, it’s not even conscious!

On returning home you better hope that you took out all of the bins and cleaned the fridge. Oh, and your plant’s dead. You won’t recognise any of the songs on the radio. You won’t follow any of the recent gossip and thankfully you are totally unaware of X-Factor or Big Brother. You will however, have to grovel to sulking pets.

Guys, don’t look at me like that. I know it was a long one but it was important. You may not care Harvey, but I know you have a real interest in conservation science for a layman/housecat Bruno.

It is now time for the most expensive shopping trip of the year. All your favourite foods in unrealistic quantities! There just don’t seem enough meals in the day to have everything you have missed quickly enough.

At first you love your freedom. You finally have private space and peace but this can be a double edged sword. The boat is full of noise and life. There was always someone awake, you could always find a friend to chat with. Now you are finally alone and it’s so very quiet. This is something you were so looking forward to but now you feel slightly anxious, lonely.

For so long you have been living incredibly closely with a diverse mix of interesting people. It’s only natural to miss your adopted family. But things come full circle. I started this blog by talking about how small this world is, how you will see the same people time and time again all over the world. I will see a lot of them at the end of the month for the CoralFISH conference but I know my path will cross those of the others time and time again. I don’t know when it will be, but I will see everyone again. I can’t wait……

Everyone from the 2nd leg of BoBEco 2011

I’m sure it’s clear that I’m alluding to something here. We got chased from Irish waters by a monstrous low pressure! Right from about as far north as Glasgow all the way back down to the Bay of Biscay, and it still hounded us there. Waves so severe that not only could we not work, it was pretty dangerous.

The unfortunate result was the cutting short of the Irish sector of the cruise. A big loss for those who were eager for data from there but something that was totally unavoidable. We had managed to do everything that we wanted to at the Arc Mounds and had headed much further north to the Logachev Mounds. Here we were repeating a survey done 10yrs ago to monitor any changes to the reef over time. The older survey had also been done by the Victor ROV (he is 18 years old! I had no idea he had aged so well). We managed to do the southern side before the weather came in and we needed to abandon the area.

The planned cruise rout; we were pursued from the Irish stations by monstrous weather.

So a new plan had to be formulated. We needed to get the most out of our remaining time and to plan around the still encroaching weather system. We tried to plan quick and efficient dives at the Irish stations while we headed south but it proved too hard to outrun the storm. We had to keep going as it was right on our heels.

We returned as far south as the Sorlingues canyon and planned to use our newly gifted time to really investigate the area, looking at areas that were likely habitats for coral. The extra time paid off and we discovered a well-developed reef that was previously unknown. With spirits raised by this good news we continued to Lampaul canyon. Unfortunately we were not able to find any new reefs there but we did get some nice behavioural observations including a fish eating what appeared to be a worm, and another fish being eaten by a squid. We did have better luck reef-hunting in the Croisic canyon. We chanced going deeper and found a dense reef at 1,200-900m, much deeper than we are used to finding them. Continuing into shallower waters the reef stopped but then started again at the usual depth of about 700m. We will have some fun trying to figure out just what is causing this.

So we managed to adapt to the changing weather well. It gave us the opportunity to more deeply investigate those areas we had already covered and allowed us to be a little braver, exploring unknown areas and following hunches. The new coral areas that were discovered help us to feel that, although we had to change our plans very quickly, we still achieved a great deal in the second leg.

It is almost time for everyone to head their separate ways. It’s great to get excited about all the new data that you are gathering but you soon realise that the real work is yet to come. As your back-up drive tells you that you have terabytes of new data the dread sets in……this is going to take a lot of late nights in the lab to get through!

That's me at the back, not doing very well.

What started as a few people with a little yoga experience is now a class. As the most experienced of us, the bilingual Angela has been taking those willing through an hour of yoga each day. The crew seem very open to the idea and there are more new faces each day.

When we are not wobbling on one foot we have been exploring the Arc mounds within Irish waters. This coral area is a relatively new discovery and our work here will help to map its extent and assess the quality and health of the reef.
From what I have seen the area is beautiful. The coral is localised to the peaks of the mounds with a halo of coral rubble around them. On the peaks there is total coral coverage. They are well developed too, not just covering the seabed but forming structures extending several meters up. Lophelia, the more robust coral, forms a strong branching structure whereas the more fragile Madrepora is delicate and has a distinctive zigzag shape. Both corals range in colour from cream to a soft pink or amber. These structures are dotted with an assortment of other life that uses them as a platform to feed from or as shelter. Approaching these structures with the ROV they have a cool blue hue due to the water absorbing red light but as you get closer the red light starts to get through and the image warms until you are confronted with the full colours of the reef. This process adds to the sense that something is being revealed to us, something hidden.

Colourful reefs of the Arc Mounds

While in this area we have conducted a mapping survey. The ROV can get much closer than the vessel; this will produce a very detailed map of the area. We will then fly over the same course using the OTUS photographic system. This system uses a downward facing camera to take photos of the seabed below the ROV and links them to the exact position where that photo was taken. The images can then be made into a mosaic. At first glance the result looks very much like our other mapping methods, until you realise that you can zoom in and actually see the structures! This method is great for giving an overview of the whole area in a very accessible way; you really get a feel for how the whole area looks.

I am also able to finally start talking about the lander…..since it has finally started working! I have never had it give me this much trouble in the past. The fault was frustrating since it only happened under pressure. On the deck everything worked fine, no matter how hard I tested it, but once it was down to more than 100m depth the camera would stop functioning. I had to resort to excessively sealing all the connectors again to get it working.
I also discovered how strong the currents are down there! It has been noted for some time that the corals are associated with high water flow; it brings them their food and prevents sediment building up and choking them. We are currently in Spring tides, where the sun and the moon pull in unison and you get really big tides. At the seabed I was recording a flow of 40cm/second, about 4 times what I am used to seeing. I can remember sitting watching the ROV footage and all those particles rushing past the camera in the current. Then thinking of my lander, with all its floats, looking like a kite. I was right to worry. When the lander returned it had been on an adventure and conducted a transect of its own. All was not lost though, on its travels it discovered a beautiful coral area that we did not know existed. We now have a whole new site we can investigate.

Surprise Reef!

The lander was deployed again, this time will much more ballast (100kg more!) and seemed to stay put. I will have to use this amount from now on it seems, at least until these big tides pass. We finally got some nice images of fish feeding.

A greedy conger eel is not put off by the extra ballast

One of the ROV displays during our exploration of the Lampaul canyon

Further up, where more food was available falling from the surface waters, life became more abundant. Some of the sheer cliff faces were covered in life. Although this wasn’t a dedicated sampling dive we did have the time to sample some of the more spectacular things that we saw; such as an enormous soft coral. It has the very accurate common name of the Red Tree. This huge specimen was about 4ft high. Beautiful.

Red Tree coral

This dive marked the end of the 1st leg of the BoBEco cruise, the leg investigating the Bay of Biscay. While in port some of our French hosts were kind enough to take some of us to La Palue at Crozon to see some more of Brittany. Some sampled the surf, some took the chance to be still for a while and doze in the sun. It was only a day but has recharged us for the second leg. During the day in Brest we exchanged personnel and readied ourselves for the next leg. We are now back out to sea and heading north. Our first stop is still within French waters but we will work our way north, heading towards the continental slope to the west of Ireland.

One of the main propeller drive shafts; the recess in the darkness is where it leaves the hull of the ship.

On the scientific side of things we have fished our exploration of the Croizic canyon. Here we did find reef structures and managed to get plenty of photos and samples of well developed reef. We also found signs of human activity, a large amount of litter, usually in the form of plastic but also lost fishing nets. We found a trawl scar 16m wide passing right through one of the reefs. The difference was quite striking, a huge stripe of the reef reduced to rubble; thousands of years of development gone in an instant.

We are now at the Guilvinec canyon. Here we are conducting exploratory transects to plot the extent of the different habitats and to ground-truth others methods that we have used to estimate them previously.
While flying along at about 2m above the seabed the ROV has two high-definition cameras. One is facing forward; allowing us to drive and also nicely showing the three dimensional structures that extend from the seabed. Directly below the ROV is a downwards facing camera. This is not affected by perspective like the forward facing camera and allows us to accurately process the proportions and types of species seen along the transect. We can take screen-grabs from the camera and have a dedicated photographic camera if we see anything exciting.
Part of the dive was dedicated to sampling. We have quite a shopping list of samples wanted by both the specialist onboard and many more back home. We have to be selective due to time constraints and space on the ROV. To maximise both how many samples we can take and save time we use an elevator to return samples to the surface. This is a large container, almost the size of a small car that falls to the seabed. It has a beacon attached so the ROV can see where it is. It can then be loaded up with samples and commanded by the ROV to release its ballast and return to the surface. There we pick it up with a small rib and the crane. This allows the ROV to stay at the bottom working for very long periods while regularly sending us little surprises to work on. In fact, the constant arrival of samples has us all feeling a little wiped out.

Creatures of the Guilivinec. Acanella (deep-sea bamboo coral) and a Crinoid (Feather star - actually a type of filter feeding starfish)

We get a rest tonight though. The ROV needs 8hours to be prepped for the next dive so overnight the geologist get to take some 3m long cores of the seabed. They have identified some interesting hummocks; they would like to know if their inner structure is geological or ancient reef.

Update: Well, never a dull moment onboard! While I was writing this there was some commotion outside. In order to deploy the corer some spotlights had been shone on the water’s surface. At night this often attracts animals that can use the opportunity to feed. Slowly the whole food chain arrives. Larger and larger fish, squid and today we even had a small common dolphin arrive. He fed rather leisurely and we saw the occasional flash of silver as he struck at fish. The night is calm and he is close enough to hear his breath, a wonderful experience to end the day on.

Huge Gorgonian

These physical samples have now arrived onboard. I have set up camp in a little lab just off the main lab. There is a window behind my laptop and as I write this I can glance through it at the flurry of activity going on. We have a wide range of specialists. People don’t just want specific animals but parts of specific animals. Some people want live tissue for genetic samples or chemical analysis, others want the hard parts to look back into the animal’s past and, due to their long life, the history of our planet. Each needs to be handled and preserved in specific ways. We have planned in advance how this will happen and through my window I am watching this slightly frantic dance take place.

It’s not all been hard work though. A little group of us have started doing yoga on deck and it is gaining popularity, we had seven participants today. We also have the upcoming Mario-cart tournament! I like my chances but Ronan and Rémy have snatched victory from me several times with highly tactical use of the blue turtle shell. Since I cannot speak French I am sure they strategise against me……or that may be the bad loser in me talking.

Early on Saturday morning we sailed out into the Bay of Biscay. This body of water is known for its rough seas and a few were feeling a little unwell in the first science meetings. The sea has been fairly rough for the whole time we have been out but seems to get worse at night. A gentle rocking can help you get off to sleep but when the movement is enough to roll you over and back again it’s a little less restful. I then get to do my late night pastime; worrying about all of my equipment on deck and in the lab. I seem to lose a lot of sleep imagining the tipping point of a monitor or a deep sea battery.
It seems like my cabin is aware that I am doing this and wants to join in. In the total darkness something will start rolling about, or will crash suddenly. Startled, I will flip on the light. Now I know it’s not possible for a room full of inanimate objects to “play innocent” but I swear it does! Everything looks exactly the same. I know that something made a crash but I just can’t see what’s different. Games like these are a great way to while the night away and I didn’t really want to sleep anyway.

We have joined is the Ifremer vessel “Pourquoi Pas?” which translates as “Why not?” a great name for a vessel of discovery. She is a large ship, about 108m long and 8 decks high and is coping well with the swell.

Upon arrival at site we deployed an ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler) which will record water currents in the area for the next week and also the Biogenic Reef Ichthyofauna Lander (BRIL) that will be looking at the fish around the coral areas. We then launched the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) “Victor 6000”. This is the most advanced piece of equipment we will use and will conduct the majority of the work during the cruise. It is a highly complex machine and deserves to be covered in far more detail in specific blog posts later in the cruise.
Currently it is diving with its geological equipment suit, flying about 50m off the seabed and bouncing sound waves off the undersea terrain. Since we can get the vehicle so close we can get much higher detail than we could from the same system mounted on the hull of a ship as the water depth is about 800m. We are currently using this to map the complex terrain of the Bay of Biscay’s canyons.

Thom

Another eventful week has been had onboard the Celtic Explorer! Life beyond the science is now typically tinged with cabin-fever but without the sea sickness! Anna is constantly dreaming of Smurfs. Kirsty absent-mindedly put custard on her battered cod yesterday (and then announced that as she doesn’t particularly like custard OR battered cod then it really didn’t make much difference to her dinner). Inge saw another ship on the horizon today and immediately announced there must be dolphins here. That logic was lost on the rest of us.

The 'Broccoli Coral'

There was an incident when broccoli from someone’s dinner plate got into the coral samples identifications and was classified as “Broccoli coral”. News from the stores is that we have run out of washing powder, but it seems that fairy liquid is almost as good, if used in small doses. Eoin has found that an early morning sauna helps him get to sleep after a long night shift. I have been going through a cold turkey stage craving chocolate! We still are functioning as scientists onboard and more now about what we’ve been doing last week in-between cabin feverish states and Vampire Diaries  marathons…

CTD WATCH NEWS

The CTD watch team last week worked hard gathering chemical data from the Arc Mounds area. To gather this data we conducted many CTD profiles and collected lots of water samples for chemicalanalysis.  We also looked after recording  ER60 fisheries echo-sounder transects over coral and non-coral areas. The deepest CTD profile of last week was to down to 2800m in a canyon west of the Arc Mounds.  It took almost an hour each way to get the CTD up and down to those depths. Patience, I am now learning is a very important quality to become a chemical oceanographer! Something that I am going to have to work on!

The CTD (for sampling for Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth)

The CTD going into the water

Last week was a big week for me personally,  as I was trusted enough to conduct the titration of the oxygen samples we have been collecting. Oxygen titration is a wet chemical method used to determine oxygen concentration in water. The water samples are taken during the CTD profile by closing bottles on the CTD at different depths from the surface to the bottom. I now do the titrations along with chlorophyll sampling and fixing the oxygen samples.

My scary moment of the week occurred  when a storm petrel flew into the wet lab whilst I was fixing oxygen samples!  After having watched the Vampire Diaries it gave me a fright and I almost splashed the chemical I was using to fix oxygen on my skin as I ran away from the bird. This was made worse by the fact that I had been told many times, that the chemical I for fixing oxygen, NaINaOH is HIGHLY corrosive! I managed to get the crews’ messroom and one of them came to my rescue, removing the bird! So thankyou Agor for saving me and the bird!

All three of us at this stage are looking forward to getting back to shore and a return to daylight hours!

ROV WATCH NEWS

Even though the diving  at the Arc Mounds was delayed due to bad weather during our transit from the Logachev Mounds and the first day on site, we still managed to complete video transects at all three coral sites and three control sites as planned.

The Arc Mounds are relatively small compared with the mounds in the Logachev region, and that seems to be reflected in the quality and diversity of the habitat.  We have seen fewer octocorals here, but  abundant stony corals.

Many of the sites have had unusually high amounts of marine snow, large particles of organic matter, in the water column, which has dramatically reduced visibility – this probably signals the onset of the spring bloom. We still managed to see lots of interesting fauna including lots of sea cucumbers, some monkfish and sharks.  On one dive we inadvertently disturbed a squid, which decided to squirt the ROV with its ink; luckily no damage was done to either party. Our favourite animal so far (except for Inge, who only loves fish), must be the Carrier Crabs (Paramola sp), which constantly hold small fragments of coral, or anything else they can find, over their backs (carapace) whilst going about their daily lives.  I guess because it is pitch black down there that this is like hiding under a coral branch and acts to  protect them from predators.

So far we have collected coral samples using  a Day grab and also during ROV dives using its suction sampler  or mechanical claw for Kirsty to for her molecular genetics studies.

Sampling with the suction gun on the ROV

Sampling a fan coral with the ROV arm

The suction sampler is remarkably effective and either sucks the chosen specimen from the seafloor straight through to an aquarium fixed on the base of the ROV or into a nozzle where they are held until they can be placed in the ROV’s hydraulic sample drawer for recovery to the surface. We were lucky to find a large Lophelia stony coral colony containing two colour morphs:  pink and a beautifully clean, pearly white. The polychaete worm Eunice norvegica which lives amongst the branches of the stony coral and causes the coral to overgrow its own paper tube with a boney outer layer, has made an appearance in several of our Lophelia samples. This is a particularly large and aggressive worm with black pincer-like jaws. One unfortunate specimen snapped closed its jaws whilst being examined closely in Inge’s palm and was consequently flung up in the air for its trouble as it gave Inge a fright! Brittlestars, seastars, bivalves, small crabs and gastropods are also found clinging to the stony coral skeletons we recovered. Sponges, hydroids, black corals and sometimes even gorgonians grow on the rubble framework of the dead stony corals.

We finished up at the Arc Mounds on Monday night after collecting samples for Kirsty and sailed 130 miles to the east (and only 60 miles from land!)  to the Belgica Mounds, part of a coral Special Area of Conservation.  We had to apply for a special license to work in the area and are looking forward to what we see there.

So cross your fingers that this oceanographic treasure hunt will continue to be a success and I’ll let you know how it all goes next week in the final cruise blog installment…!