Is 5am, sunrise colors up the clouds in pink. We are at 74N and turning south. We have been twelve days at sea and got ten days more to go. I'm in the 4-8 morning and evening shift of ecosounder (eco for short). We sit and watch the eco for big fish patches and we do some CTDs (an instrument that measures temperature and salinity from the surface to the bottom of the oceans). If we see something on the eco we put our net out and see if it is Capelin. The idea behind this cruise is to estimate how much capelin (Mallotus villosus) is out there and to determine how many tons are sustainable to catch.
Yesterday we finally saw them for the first time. They live in the first 300 m of the water column and they like warmish waters between 1-2 C. Fun facts, this fish appears in the Icelandic 10kr coins, with its eggs and wasabi the Japanese make a caviar and even though small they have a good market price. ---------------------------------- Son las 5 am, el amanecer colorea las nubes de rosa. Estamos en 74N virando hacia el sur. Llevamos doce días embarcados y quedan diez. Estoy en la guarida de ecosonda (eco) de 4-8 de la mañana y de la tarde. Nos sentamos y miramos la eco en busca de manchas de peces y hacemos algunos CTDs ( instrumento que mide la temperatura y salinidad desde superficie hasta el fondo). Si vemos algo en la eco,lanzamos tuestes red para averiguar si se trata de un banco de capelin. La finalidad de esta campaña es saber la abundancia de capelín (Mallotus villosus) y cuánto es sustentable pescar. ayer los vimos por primera vez. El capelín vive en los primeros 300 m de la columna de agua y gusta de temperaturas entre 1 y 2C. Factores interesantes; el capelín aparece en la moneda de 10kr islandesas, en Japón las huevas se mezclan con wasabi para formar un caviar, aunque es un pescado pequeño tiene un buen precio de mercado. I was talking to my friend and student María C.M.. She just got published her first manuscript. We all remember the joy we felt when our first paper came out, showing that we were becoming a real scientist!! I was talking to her and trying to explain that five years later, I still get happy when I see my work on its final published version. We spend so much time acquiring data, processing it, plotting it into graphs that can talk by themselves, writing the results, editing them again and again until we get a final manuscript... It just feels great to see it finished, shiny and hanging out in the journal's website.
On the other side of the Ph.D., my friend and colleague Yeray S.F. who is about to defend his thesis, has also gotten a paper published this same month. Even though this paper presented a hard fight, anyone that knows him could have seen his enthusiasm on disseminating the results once it came out. Getting the final version of your work feels great to us scientists and thus, I want to congratulate María and Yeray for their work and perseverance, and wish them luck on their next steps. (You can check their work on the publication tab of this website). -------------------------------------------- |
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April 2024
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