May 11 2008
May 11 2008
Paper flowers for our surrogate mom, Kathy Scanlon.
Waiting for a dredge to come up – this is the winch room where the daily photograph is taken.
The wet-lab post-scrub and ready for some samples.
Who is this creature staring out at us?
A spiny brittle star from today’s trawl.
A deep-sea spider.
To all of our Mom’s (and Mum’s) back there on shore, Happy Mothers day. Though here on the ship we’ve christened today “Kathy Day”, as she is the one mamma we have out here, and I’m sure is missed today by her two daughters back onshore.
Today has been a busy one, after many delays in getting to Elephant Island because of fog, we finally arrived around 9am this morning. The weather was not quite co-operative enough for a TowCam run as yet, so instead we’ve been focused on sampling. We’re spending the time here perfecting our sampling techniques ready for when we head out into the Drake Passage. A dredge on a steeper slope came up with some corals, a box dredge has yet to be so successful (a much lighter package so more tricky to keep on the seafloor), and then we had a wonderful haul of corals, starfish and sea cucumbers using the Otter Trawl.
Rhian Waller