Dear all,

This is where it all ends, the ship docked at 0800 o’clock this morning at Fairlie in the Clyde, and we are currently in the process of unloading all our kit, including all the various samples that were collected out on the ridge. It was a pleasure to read Monty’s last dayprogramme, ending with the obligatory: that’s all folks! I can’t help feeling slightly blue as all members will spread to every corner of the country (some abroad).

Thursday’s RPC (request the pleasure of your company), was a nice social event in which Monty invited everyone to a gathering at the ship bar, which was a nice opportunity for crew and scientists to discuss the findings of the cruise over a drink or two.
Last night EK60 calibration of Arran went surprisingly smoothly, my team mates and I finished work at around 0300 o’clock, after having arrived at the location at 1430. Yesterdays events involved the final CTD of the cruise, and the excitement of the PML team (especially Gavins) was infectious, rubbing off on all of us. The good mood was unfortunately ruined by Birkir who, by the way, is still sulking a bit because he lost his hat off the side of the ship (see picture of Birkir with no hat).

Birkir (with no hat), Tom (with hat) and Martin (with hat AND cosy ear flaps).

We also saw the deployment of the rescue boat, allowing for the photographer David Shale to get some footage of the ship from the sea. A lucky few were thus able to make across to shore, on the beautiful island of Aran. Reliable sources tell me that the main attraction was the local chocolate shop. The rest of us could only watch in envy as our colleagues were setting foot on land for the first time.

As this is the last entry of this cruises’ blog I hope that all you folks back home have enjoyed reading about our adventures. We’ve certainly enjoyed sharing our work, and look forward to next year, so please do watch this space for news about the 2008 ECOMAR Discovery cruise!

Best,

Tom Bech Letessier
PhD student, PERG, University of St Andrews

Despite the excitement building over the past couple of days at the prospect of standing on stable ground again, it was still somewhat of a shock to awake this morning to see land surrounding the James Cook. Any land would be contrast enough to the dark blue swells and white caps that had exclusively composed the horizon for the last month, but the cliffs and woods of western Scotland were a particularly beautiful sight.

Passing Ireland in the early hours of morning, the ship spent the first half of the day sailing up the lower Firth of Clyde toward the Isle of Arran. Under sun and blue skies, and protected from the harsher oceanic winds, the atmosphere on deck was warm and some of the crew took the opportunity for recreational fishing (the technological simplicity of which is even more striking after OTSBs and RMTs). Several jellyfish were caught for David to photograph using a yet simpler technique: slowly lowering large buckets into the water.

An especially captivating display was put on by the northern gannets (Morus bassanus). The sleek, white birds spot their prey while flying 30 to 45 meters above the water’s surface, and, tucking their wings inward to form a distinct “W”, dive at speeds up to 100 km/hour and to depths averaging 20 meters.

Later, the ship’s rescue boat underwent a routine test, providing the chance for a few people to go ashore briefly.

Cleaning and packing efforts intensified today, as most of the labs were emptied of their gear, the floors mopped and the sinks scrubbed for the next scientific party. Specimens fixed in formalin, sensors from the landers and other instruments, and essentially anything else that is to be removed from the ship and sent back to its research institute of origin, was moved into the hanger and onto the aft deck. This was mostly accomplished by dinner, which unfortunately was the last time on this cruise that some of the crew will experience the impressive desserts of chef Lloyd Sutton

The last work that remains to be done is the EK60 calibration, the same process described by Nikki on 15 July. As a quick reminder, this involves lowering a 38.1mm tungsten sphere below the ship, and locating the sphere on each of the five frequencies of the EK60 echosounder. Actual measurements are compared with predictions to identify how earlier EK60 data should be corrected. This calibration is going more smoothly than the session at Bantry Bay in Ireland, due to less attenuation caused by plankton and fish encircling the vessel (causing the sphere’s signal to weaken), but each frequency still requires two hours. Martin Cox, Mike Myers, and Birkir, manning the EK60 console in the main lab, noted a growing number of jellyfish beneath the ship, but as of now calibration continues without serious interruption. And in the morning, after the calibration is completed, we head to port.

Jeff Mashburn
Durham University

To day and yesterday have been days of packing and meetings summing up the achievements of the cruise while we are steaming towards the Isle of Arran where we hope to find shelter from the wind and swells so we can calibrate the EK60 echosounders on calm sea. I think the scientific work is finished for most groups except for Mick who stands on top of the bridge from dawn to dusk identifying and counting whales and we in the Pelagic Ecology Research Group will do the Ek60 calibration tomorrow to make sure all the acoustic data we have been sampling for last weeks is of good quality.

From a scientific meeting on board where the science of the cruise are summarized.

To day Mick saw among other things a sperm whale close to the ship.

During this cruise we have been researching all different aspects of the ecosystem and physics of the ocean over the Mid Atlantic Ridge. We have studied everything from the small plants (phytoplankton) floating in the surface waters, to the huge whales cruising the oceans. Including the birds flying over the waves, the fish swimming in the water column, and all sorts of invertebrates swimming and floating around in the sea. We have also examined the animals living in, on and just above the ocean floor, from the depths of the valleys to the tops of the seamounts of the Mid Atlantic ridge. To further understand what is going on down there, we have studied the currents and characteristics of the seawater in the area and we have mapped the sea floor. To accomplish all this we have been using high technology ranging from satellites traveling in circum polar orbits around the earth to highly specialized equipment operating at the extreme depths of the seafloor. Hence, this has truly been a multi-discipline cruise and it’s amazing to see all the specialized fields in practice side by side trying to get the big picture of the Mid Atlantic Ridge ecosystem. Still this cruise only gives us a snap shot of what really is going on down there and hence it is with excitement that I wait for more such events, each bringing to shore new knowledge on the mysteries of the ocean.

Birkir Bardarson
Pelagic Ecology Research Group
University of St Andrews.

Not very nice weather today, a little rough and mostly cloudy – unlike yesterday with its mostly blue skies.

Science is finished now, and some of the packing has already been done. One of the main things people are now thinking about is this evening’s quiz night organised by Terry, with a little help from Colin. Another milestone to the end of the cruise is that its the last bond today – last chance to but teeshirts, shields etc during the cruise.

Mick, the whale watcher is still out though, despite the wind, and the occaisonal rain squals and so far this morning he’s seen about ten dolphins and a black-headed gull, which is apparently quite rare for this area.

For me though, the end of the cruise is about more than just packing and quiz nights. My job involves organising all the data that has been logged and archiving it onto either tape (in the case of the 100+GB of EK-60 data) or DVD. Several copies of the data are made, with one copy going to the British Oceanographic Data Centre in Liverpool, one being kept by National Marine Facilities for around six months, and another for the scientists involved with the data, or the Principal Scientist.

One of my hobbies is amateur radio, so I thought I’d give a guided tour of all the radio and satellite gear on the vessel.

When people first see the ship (or a picture of it) one of the things they notice first is the huge dome above the bridge. This is the VSat dome, and most of the phone calls and all of the data that travel to and from the ship go through here.

There are two smaller domes to either side of the ship. On the left side of the picture is the dome for the Inmarsat B system. This is another phone system which is used as a backup for the Vsat. The calls costs pounds per minute, unlike those on the VSat which cost pennies per minute. On the right side of the picture is the dome for the Dartcom satellite image system, which is used to receive weather images from the US NOAA satellites and the Chinese Fengyun 1D satellite.

As well as the three domes there are other much smaller antennas for Inmarsat C (Telex), the various GPS navigation antennas, along with the differential antenna, which is used to increase the accuracy of GPS to around 2m. You can see some of these above the big VSat dome, and also on the left-hand side of the photo in front of the Inmarsat B dome.

There are also some large whip antennas used for MF/HF and VHF communications, and also for reception of weather FAX (WEFAX) MF/HF is rarely used these days, with the majority of the vessels long-range communications being handled by the various satellite communications systems.

Paul Duncan
NMFS Sea Systems, UK

Here is an article by Gavin Tilstone about the Ecomar cruise and its aims. ecomar_challenger_article_tilstone.pdf

In deteriorating weather (again), the last CTD’s of the cruise were cancelled and the ship left the northeast station before midnight on Monday, heading for home at full speed. Packing is underway, since every last piece of equipment must be ready to be moved off the ship as soon as we dock. Attention is also turning to another extremely important aspect of the cruise, which is to document our activities.

Without going into details, it costs a lot of money to send 31 scientists to sea, together with the supporting infrastructure they need. I don’t think anyone has ever worked it out, but it makes every piece of data we collect during our time at sea very valuable. It is important that the data are seen as a resource for NERC.

Also, with increasing concerns over changes in climate, diminishing biodiversity, and man made impacts on the environment, it is becoming more important than ever before to ensure that the data we collect is comparable with, and available to make comparisons to other data sets.

In order to do this, we need to record exactly what went on during the cruise and what we got out of it. The first step in this process is to complete the cruise report. Every individual contributes to this in some way. It will include a narrative of all our scientific activities, expound the problems we encountered, explain why we did what we did and document what we achieved. Then there will be a report on each individual activity; mooring deployments, megacores, midwater trawls, CTD profiles, primary productivity, bottom trawls, lander deployments, shrimp tows, bathymetric surveys and so on. If you have been reading our blog, you will know just how complex our operation has been, as it has covered a multitude of different disciplines. Each of these must be accurately documented.

We will include tables of stations, plots of data, calibration equations, maps and charts, diagrams of equipment, pictures and photographs and anything else we consider pertinent. The whole will be edited together, published and circulated to the participants, interested individuals, oceanographic libraries and relevant data centres. It will form an essential “metadata” set for posterity.

However, this is just the first step along the way. Once home, one of the most important things we will have to do is bank, or archive, our data with the relevant data centre. If any of us get run over by a bus, or our computer blows up, it means that there is another copy of our data somewhere for others to use. Most of the data will go to NERC’s British Oceanographic Data Centre in Liverpool. However, the survey took place under the auspices of the Census of Marine Life, so data will also be passed into their database. In order to archive the data, and ensure its compatibility with similar data sets, further metadata will be required. Each piece of information must have associated with it basics such as the time collected, the location (latitude and longitude) where it was collected, any calibration information and so on. Much of these data should be passed on within the next 6 months, although it frequently takes much longer than this to assemble everything. Two years is not unusual, but we hope that we will be publishing some of our results long before then

Jane Read
NOC Southampton, UK

Today, we’ve been at sea for exactly a month, and have just finished sampling at the final, Northeast station. As Espen described yesterday, there’s a palpable change in the atmosphere onboard with everyone’s thoughts turning to their lives back on land. Today, however, it was decided by the captain that we would return to Fairlie, on the Clyde, instead of Aberdeen. This is because of the threat of a storm to the north of the British Isles at the weekend, and also because we are running short of fresh water. Unfortunately, the change in port means a lot of last-minute logistical problems, as people have to change details of how to transport themselves, their equipment, and samples back to where they live and work.

Although the end is in sight, there is still a lot of interesting science being carried out onboard. Overnight, Andy Dale and Colin Griffiths carried out “Yo-Yo CTDs” which, as the name suggests, is when the CTD is continually raised and lowered throughout the water column. This was carried out for 16 hours, in an area close to where we have deployed the long-term mooring. The Yo-Yo CTDs examined how temperature and salinity varies throughout the water column over a complete tidal cycle, and will fill in the gaps in the data provided by the mooring.

As the moon travels round the earth, it pulls the ocean, which uses up a lot of energy and causes tides. This process is slowing the moon down, and causing it to move closer to the earth, which it may one day collide with (a very long time in the future). Although this is a small effect, it is measurable. Tides, in turn, lose energy because of friction, which is very big along ridges compared to the ocean margins, although the importance of ridges in this process wasn’t fully appreciated until recently. From the density (which is a function of temperature and salinity) anomalies identified in their data, Andy and Colin can calculate the amount of energy that is being “extracted” from the tide by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This is also part of their ongoing research which aims at understanding the circulation of deep water in the North Atlantic.

At the same time as the CTDs were being carried out, the EK60 echo-sounder was being used to examine how the zooplankton zonation changed overnight. It is well known that zooplankton moving closer to the sea surface at night, generally to feed on phytoplankton, then back down again during the day. Given their small size (often only a few millimeters long), some zooplankton migrate over very large distances indeed. Last night, we observed two zones of zooplankton, one which is normally at around 300 m depth during the day, and one which is normally found at 150 to 50 m, which both moved to the surface during the night, then back down again as the sun came up.

After the long CTD deployment was complete, it was time to retrieve the two landers that were still on the seafloor: the PAL lander and the Amphipod trap. The Amphipod trap, which is like a very small lobster creel, came back full of small scavengers, which will be examined in great detail by Tammy Horton in Southampton, who specializes in these fascinating creatures. This marked the last physical sample that we will obtain during this cruise.

Following the return of the landers, we are now carrying out a final EK60 transect. This will finish around midnight, when the ship will finally turn towards the Clyde and start the journey home.

Alan Hughes.
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

Last night’s trawl concluded the fishing part of this cruise, so the fish of the MAR may once again feel safe. The last sea-living creatures (except from the crew) to see the deck of James Cook this time around, will be that of the amphipod trap and Megacorer. The trap and PAL will be recovered tomorrow, and that’s it. Some CTD’s, a couple of EK60 transects, a short stop for calibration of the EK60, and about 1000 nautical miles later we are back on dry land.

The mood on the ship has taken a turn towards “Channel Fever”, even though were not actually coming up the channel. It’s a strange thing, and I’m sure an anthropologist could write many papers on it, how the number of smiles you see each day increases exponentially for each day the shore gets closer. People are singing and laughing on deck, and in the wet-lab where an aura of seriousness and smelly fish have ruled, there is now smiles and jolly fish-gutting going on.

Not to worry though, this has not turned in to a cruise liner yet, there are still lots of scientific work going on. Last night’s trawl produced much processing work, there has been a CTD, an optical cast, a coring, and deployment of the amphipod trap and PAL.

Since the sky has been nice and clear today, Victor and Gavin finally had their chance of comparing their measurements with satellite imagery. This is not something that happens every day, because there is a lot of clouds in this part of the world, and the satellite instruments used in bio-optics can’t see through the clouds. They timed the optical cast to the exact moment a satellite would pass over our location, but as they were about to get the instrument in the water, the clouds came rolling, covered the sky and any possibility of getting satellite data. Being in the “ground truthing business” is not easy! This however, was not enough to ruin Victor’s mood. In fact as the clouds rolled by, one could witness a quite spectacular duet version of “Blueberry Hill”, performed by Victor & Rhys, a big moment in music history.

All work and no play… When you gut a lot of fish you produce a lot of waste in form of intestines and guts, just the sort of stuff sharks loves. So what do you do with the waste? You put it in a net, toss it over the side and try to attract some shark. Great fun, if the sharks decides to show up that is. But as we were hanging over the side, looking for sharks, a big group of Pilot Whales appeared. Between 40 and 60 individuals swam by, and for the first time on this cruise, some big males as well. A great end of the day!

With that I leave you to it, but stay tuned, there will be more tomorrow.

Espen Mikkelsen
IMR

With a region of low pressure being predicted for today the whole ship was expecting stormy weather that would have rendered science onboard particularly limited but today the sun has been shining and the stillness of the ocean has been notable….

As a result today has been action packed! First thing this morning the deep sea trawl (OTSB) arrived on deck giving all the enthusiastic scientists a long day of processing with many exciting moments as different species which lie beneath were brought to our attention. With numerous invertebrates and fish species being preserved in order to provide specimens which will allowi people not lucky enough to be at sea to enjoy the beauties of the deep.

A typical day of processing involves a convey belt like system… Nikki King orchestrates the deep sea fish processing like a military system. Initially each individual fish is assigned a number, a wet weight is determined and the fish are measured (total body length, standard length, head length and pre anal length). Each fish is then cut open and the liver, stomach, and gonads (reproductive organs) are weighed. Then using a scaled system the stomach is rated for fullness and the gonads are rated in terms of how developed they, the somewhat eviscerated fish is then passed onto the other members of the convey belt. Tissue samples of muscle are removed and in the case of a few fish the liver, gonads, stomach are preserved for sampling when back on dry land. After all this has occurred the fish are then passed on in order to have their otoliths removed. This process involves making a cut just behind the eyes of the fish an ideal cut removes the top of the skull, revealing the full length of the soft white brain underneath. Push the rear of the brain to one side, or cut it out all together. The large pair of otoliths should be visible underneath the rear of the brain, remove these with a pair of tweezers. Fish otoliths accrete layers of calcium carbonate and gelatinous matrix throughout their lives, by counting the rings it is possible to determine the age of the fish in years.

The amphipod trap has also been recovered; this is a way of being able to investigate the many different species that reside in the deeps recovering entire individuals. Allowing us to see whether there may differences in amphipods in the deep sea examples compared to other water depths as well as to see first hand the gigantism reported in many papers regarding this topic.

The megacorer has also been sent down to the deeps, this actively takes samples of the sea bed and return these to the vessel, thus allowing the composition of the ocean floor to be studied.

The PAL lander was recovered and im sure when the photo’s are analysed it will shed light on what fish species are present at different times during food falls to the deep ocean.

Also the shrimp camera was deployed transecting the summit of the mid Atlantic ridge, this allows us to see (in real time) from the vessel what the seafloor is really like.

All in all, everybody has had a busy day and were all rewarded with the usual Saturday night curry! (which is always exceptional!)

J. Hawkins
Oceanlab, Aberdeen
Sat 11th August

Today has been very busy for the biologists. An otter trawl was landed early this morning full of deep water marine life. Fish, starfish, urchins, holothurians and crustaceans were all avidly sorted, examined, sized and described by a large team of dedicated scientists in what looked to the untrained eye like a production line. This took most of the day to complete. Along side this two RMT trawls were completed, examining the top layers of the ocean for biomass of various types to correlate with the acoustic data that we have been collecting. This evening a SHRIMP run is underway, looking at the habitats and (slow-moving) animals that live on the seafloor some 2,600m down. This run was postponed from yesterday evening when a fault in the cable that supplies SHRIMP with power and communications developed. This meant a long night for the technicians to get it ready for today.

OTSB (bottom otter trawl) catch.

Scientists eagerly await the morning’s haul (from left to right: Ian Cross, Will Reid, Tom Letessier [waving] and Tonya Rogacheva).

This brings me neatly on to the role the technicians play in supporting the scientists aboard the vessel. The beginning of a cruise for the technical staff starts well before the ship sets off. Equipment has to be assembled together either from existing stocks, bought new form commercial sources or specially customised or developed for a particular scientific requirement. In this latter case, development can start a year or more before the use of the equipment at sea.

Depending on the type of cruise, a team of technicians is assembled to best suit the requirements of the trip – mechanical, electronic, computer and instrumentation experts each with their own specialities and skill sets. On board for JC011 there are three mechanical, two electronic and one computer technician, each specialising in one or more aspects of the cruise as well as providing more general engineering support. To paraphrase a well known saying, you have to be ‘a jack of most trades and master of lots’. This was well illustrated yesterday evening during the re-termination of the SHRIMP cable. One moment you are wielding a grinder to cut the cable while a colleague heats up the termination module with a blow torch in order to release the cable, in other words work that would expect to see in a blacksmiths. While later in the same process you are connecting a plug to the fibre-optic strand in the cable – thinner than a human hair – and having to look down a microscope to polish the end. Such is the range of skills required.

Another requirement for the seagoing technician is the ability to troubleshoot and fix equipment with the resources available on the ship. This has, in the past, included raiding the sonar spares box in order to fix the ship’s washing machine – a most important function as you can imagine.

Nothing so dramatic has happened this evening as I write this with SHRIMP taking nice video images of the seafloor with just the changing of tapes and disks required.

Ian Rouse, Oceanographic engineer
NOC Southampton

Last night, the sea conditions thankfully calmed down to slight 1m swell with a light wind of 2-4 knots. Through the fog patches of the early hours the mid-water trawl (RMT) was deployed 4 times.
The nets of the first trawl were opened at 150m and closed at 100m. The opening and closing of the nets is controlled by acoustic command to avoid contamination of the catch with animals from different depths.
The first trawl brought in a varied catch abundant in winged pteropods. The second trawl, from 550m to 450m, was dominated by euphausids (Krill) and mysid shrimp. The third trawl sampled from 350m – 250m and the fourth from 75m to the surface. The fourth trawl contained a lot of myctophid fish and decapods.

This haul of myctophid fish was welcomed by Birkir Bardarson, University of St Andrews, who squeezed them into a Perspex T-Tube to measure the velocity of sound through their bodies. The ratio of the sound velocity in seawater to the sound velocity through creatures within the water column will be used to interpret results from echo sounding surveys.

The invertebrates from the catches were sorted into dominant groups and preserved using a variety of methods including freezing at -80 C, flash freezing in liquid nitrogen at -200 C and preserving in formaldehyde. These preservation techniques allow for molecular analysis looking at the genetics and the trophic levels of the various species. This will be done by Tom Letessier, University of St Andrews, for his PhD.

These catches provide an image of the vertical distribution of fauna in the pelagic realm. They also serve to ground truth the data from the EK60 echo sounding profiles.

Echo sounding profile (left at 18 kHz, right at 38 kHz) showing the scattering layers to be ground truthed by pelagic trawling

After breakfast the NE mooring was deployed by the SAMS team. This reaches from the seafloor to 200m below the surface and includes an upward looking ADCP, 2 sediment traps and 6 current meters. This will be recovered in a year.

After lunch, following the same procedure for all the superstations, the PALander and the amphipod trap were deployed, followed by a CTD and optics cast (see previous blog entries for more details)

The following photos give an idea of some of the animals that we have found during this cruise from the sea surface to the seafloor:

Pelagic

Vertebrates

This is the underside of a myctophid fish that has rows of photophores providing counter illumination (to disguise the shape of the fish from predators spying from below)

Borostomias has a photophore lure on its barbel and two photophores below the each eye

Stonias as two rows of photophores along the length of its body and another on its barbel

Invertebrates

An amphipod

A copepod

A juvenile cranchid squid

A euphausiid (krill)

A juvenile mysid (gnathophausia). As an adult its carapace turns bright red

A polynoid worm

A pteropod

Benthic

Vertebrates

Pudgy cusk eel, Spectrunculus grandis, with chimaera top right corner

Shortnosed rabbitfish, Hydrolagus affinis

Spotty pudgy cusk eel, Spectrunculus grandis

Blue Hake, Antimora rostrata

Deepwater ray, Bathyraja sp.

Invertebrates

Pycnogonid

Giant ostracod

Jessica Craig
PhD student, Oceanlab