In this new job, I go to sea four times a year. Normally I go on the physical oceanography cruises but once a year I get to go on a biological cruise. This means that I not only do CTD profiles but I also get to see what people from other fields do. We have been sailing for only two days, but let me tell you about the last 24 hours.
To start, the first night of the cruise we had fin whale for dinner. In this bio cruises I always get interesting meals.... last year I had half lamb face (yeah with teeth and all) and hákal (some Chondrichthyes that smells really strong). Maybe is the Viking mood joining with the biological aspect of the cruise... On the early morning the echosounder showed lots of patches of capelin fish and by the time we went back to them they were even bigger. So we went on and sample it. We took out a lot of grown-up fishes whose size, age and sex were later explored in our labs. Immediately after that, the Bongo net came out and our zooplankton team took their samples. Sometime around two pm, the whale and bird watching team decided that the weather was nice and that enough whales were around to take out the dinghy and try to tag a whale. Whale tagging consists of two folks on a dinghy carrying a stick with the tag, while the rest of the crew stands all around the ship seeking for whales. After that is mainly the old hide an seek game, this time the whales won, but we will try again next time. So yes, two days,lots of activity and enthusiasm. I'll try to post pictures later |
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April 2024
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