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Yesterday's blue skies and calm seas were a great contrast to the stormy weather that began the New Year. We took advantage of the opportunity and completed 6 stations in the last 2 shift, with the night shift putting in a particularly strong effort to do nearly 4 complete stations. This afternoon the strong winds are returning as predicted and may force another halt to sampling in the next few hours. We are approaching the end of this stage of the CEAMARC sampling and when conditions allow we will return to the Polynya moorings to move the Pole Compass. The big isopods, amphipods and sea-spiders of the past few days were put firmly in their place last night by the arrival of the Big Polychaete. This magnificent bristle-worm (a polynoid or scale-worm) was about 9 inches (230 mm) long, 3.5 inches (90 mm) across, with scales more than 1 inch (24 mm) in diameter and weighed about 330 gm - at just three to the kilo this is by far the largest polychaete seen by any of the benthic ecologists on board. We have since captured video imagery of these monsters scurrying along the sea-bed as the trawl approaches. To top it off, the bristle-worms arrived complete with their own over-size parasitic nematodes (up to 4 inches long) infesting the space under the scales. Regards, Martin and Sarah.
Map
A map showing Australia and Antarctica. The map shows the journey of one voyage that has occured in the season, with each route highlighted in a distinct colour.