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There was no seamount. Which means that the Bruce Rise is a remarkably featureless table-top with little habitat variation (overheard in a debrief: “The Bruce Rise is deep and boring and muddy”). Which is not to say that the time spent there was wasted, as the gear got a good work out, and the images returned from the bottom are exceptionally good. One of the intriguing features photographed (other than the bottle...) are a series of remarkably straight lines which have generated their share of wild speculation (young hoon on a motorbike during the last glacial maximum or Nazca Line equivalents). The main sampling trawl conducted yesterday landed 1.7 tonne of material on the deck of the ship, with 200 kg being fine sorted for a grand total of 120 grams of biological material. Lots of people are wearing work clothes covered in the fine mud of the sea floor... In all, 85 species have been identified, including sea urchins, brittle stars, shrimp, star fish, amphipods, sea spiders, octopus, and an unidentified ?new species? And the bottle. Oh... and a radiator hose.
Last night around sunset, we did the “ships passing in the night” thing with the “Zhu Long”, the Chinese resupply ship, which passed about 6 nm to our north. The officer on watch bade them good evening, and information on ice conditions was exchanged. We’re currently moving on to an area with potentially a greater range of habitats than Bruce Rise: a polynya close to the Shackleton Ice Shelf, with water depths of between 500 and 1500 m being targeted, which better suits the gear we have on board for trawling. This area is also open to commercial fishing, so is of greater interest to the ultimate aims of the project.
Have a wonderful New Years Eve everyone! We’ll be celebrating on completion of the project, but will look forward to reporting tomorrow in 2010!
Regards, Doug, Aaron & Margaret
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.