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I’ve just realised that I could have repeated the first paragraph from yesterday’s sitrep and it would still be accurate which suggests that we are starting to settle into a routine. Overnight we ticked past the quarter way mark of the voyage.
Yesterday, after the Australia Day break in deployments, Chief Mate Robbie managed the first “6 green ticks” MIDOC trawl which meant that he was within 10m of the correct depth for each net closure, over the entire 1000m depth. (Actually he did better than that – I think the biggest error was 5m and a few of the net closures were spot on.) One interesting thing that came out of the MIDOC trawl last night was very large and unfortunate jellyfish along with numerous fish species of the finned variety.
Of course apart from MIDOC, there were the usual CTD, trace metals and RMT deployments as well. Overnight, using the RMT, we caught krill of the euphausia surperba variety. These are commonly known as Antarctic krill; as opposed to the smaller Crystal Krill (euphausia crystallorophias) which we have mostly seen so far.
Worth mentioning is that we have a number of people on-board whose primary role is not the marine science program but the Mawson resupply (still another 24 days away) including Ed and Danny, our plant operators. So far, the biggest plant they been able to operate is the dish washing machine in support of the Galley crew. Our watercraft operators and refuelling supervisor have been donning the rubber gloves and getting right into helping the fish scientists sort out the catch from each of the bags as they come off the deck. They also been pitching in with valuable assistance to water sampling and filtering activities as we go along.
We are currently stationary doing a trace metals CTD. On completing this station, we heading west along latitude 62.5 south and should reach the foot hills of the Kerguelen Rise in the next couple of days.
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.