Having arrived back at Western Channel
rMCZ yesterday, the day shift began where we all left off on (a very
choppy) Thursday. The night shift took over at midnight and have been
working like a well oiled (and slightly bleary eyed) machine through
the night to get as many stations as possible sampled. Although the
site is a large one, we are hoping to be finished with the sampling
by midnight tonight and then steaming off to the next one! The next
part of the trip is being planned at the moment but we should be
heading somewhere close to the Isle of Wight to continue gathering
important data for the MCZ project.
During the night we have taken videos
of a shelly, sandy, gravelly seabed with interesting ripple features.
On this type of ground there aren't
many animals to be seen living on top of the sediment. When taking
grabs of these areas we did however find a good example of the crab
species Eurynome spinosa (amongst other things) which you can
see below, checking himself out in the ID book. The communities
living within the sediment will be analysed by experts when we get
back.
When moving across the
site we found harder ground with cobbles and boulders and saw some exciting
invertebrate life which we also sampled a bit of in the grabs. In the
photograph below you can see Devonshire cup corals (a close up
picture also below), Dead men's fingers, Anemones (a close up picture
also below) and Serpulid worms all living on a single cobble!
Close up of Devonshire cup coral
Close up of anemone (tentacles in) living on shell fragment
We're now looking forward to seeing
what the next shift has to offer!
