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In the last 24 hours, we conducted RMT (Rectangular Midwater Trawls) and CTD (Conductivity Temperature Depth) deployments. We’ve also released a SOCOMM oceanographic float.
The crowds for the live video from the RMT have been reduced to the diehard fans (a.k.a. acousticians and krill scientists). Nevertheless the target trawls in which we identify a target on the echo-sounder and then proceed to sample it have been fascinating.
Despite having lights on the RMT; we cannot use lights for target trawling as the light might attract or repel creatures, and we are trying to take truly representative samples of what is down there for our survey work. However even without the lights we have been able to see the net down to depths of 100m. Deeper than that; it’s completely dark except for the “fireflies”. These are the luminescent flashes from various tiny sea creatures as they fly past the camera. I’m assured by a resident expert that some of these flashes are from krill.
We certainly caught krill yesterday. It was daunting to walk through the wet lab and see our scientists picking through a large pile of krill with tweezers. Seems a bit like trying to sort and count the rice grains in a plate of risotto. On the target trawl that was conducted late yesterday, we saw a lot of biological material in the water which was evidently attracting the krill. It seems as if the krill was then attracting larger predators as a whale was seen close by the ship while we were conducting the operation. Apart from krill, we also caught a tiny ice fish.
We have just completed a further target trawl this morning and to a certain amount of surprise, we only caught salps and no krill. What is a salp? It’s a small creature about the size of a young tadpole and which largely consists of a single sac. In discussion with Jake and Jess, it has been determined that their scientific name shall henceforth be Gelatinous Blobbus.
Currently stopped doing CTD work.
Lloyd and Brett
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.