Today we were steaming further west to our first SE station on the Mid Atlantic Ridge.

There was mainly preparation going on today, where the last bits and pieces were put together in preparation for the arrival at our first station, which has been estimated to be tomorrow evening.

The highlights for today were the calibration of the optics to 100m depth and the CTD measurements that were taken to 3800m depth.

We had a scientist meeting today, where every team gave a presentation about their aims for this expedition

Jane Read, NOCS, will be looking at the upper ocean circulation using a combination of CTD and ADCP observations together with satellite altimeter data.

SAMS will look into the effect of the mid-Atlantic Ridge on water circulation. They will be deploying moorings at the 4 stations. Their main interest is in the northern part of the study area.

The Plymouth Marine Laboratory will be looking at the primary productivity throughout the expedition.

St Andrews is going to investigate the pelagic zooplankton, its distribution and genetic divergence between the stations.

Oceanlab will be looking mainly at deep sea fish and scavengers. Three Landers will be deployed, 1 of which (DOBO) is a long term lander that will stay in the Charlie-Gibbs Fraction Zone, where it will release bait to monitor fish populations during winter months.

Dove Marine Laboratory will be looking at the differences between the food webs of this area, which is assumed to have no or limited hydrothermal vent activity, compared to areas with hydrothermal activity.

The NOCS team will be measuring the benthic composition and biomass of the study area, this will be done by using megacorers and trawls.

No whales were sighted today and only a handful of shearwaters. This could have been because we were passing through quite oligotrophic waters today.

Claudia Alt,
Oceanlab, University of Aberdeen
17th July 2007