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It’s Saturday morning on the AA – at least I’m pretty sure it is. The sun has disappeared again. Sadly; it just seems more normal that way.
Overnight, we crossed our track voyage track from the 6th February which means we are going around in circles again but it’s strictly according to the master plan. We are now crossing BANZARE bank one last time and should be back out in deep water later tonight. Currently there is just 1870m of water under the keel.
Our last station was on the crossing point which provided a rare opportunity to compare results at the same point in the ocean, a week apart; Other events of note were that we encountered two swarms of Euphausia superba (“the king of krill”) which is highly unusual this far north. A whale was sighted nearby one of the swarms which was doubtless conducting its own sampling program.
I wanted to give a mention to the Southern Ocean Forensics team of Bruce and Lawrence (a.k.a. CSI Aurora) who have been sampling seawater all the way along. The samples will be taken back home where they will be DNA sequenced to provide a survey of the types and concentrations of those organisms which are careless enough to leave their DNA lying around. I just encountered Bruce down on E-Deck and asked him if anything exciting had happened in DNA world lately. He said “No” but I reckon he was just trying to keep a lid on it.
Last night we had exciting times with the Rectangular Midwater Trawl. Sea conditions were very difficult which caused the net to rotate 180 degrees as it came up to the surface. The gear had to be flipped back before it could be recovered which is a very tricky operation in a big swell but the crew did a great job to get the net back. There was a kink in the fibre optic cable which gave our computers a convulsion but after we applied some sophisticated troubleshooting techniques (we turned it off and on again) everything was back and operational. So we still have broadband to the ocean deep.
We are getting ready for another MIDOC trawl this morning.
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.