Farewell to the night shift!

Today was our last night shift of the survey and we have been busy taking the last video tows at the Wight-Barfleur Extension site. This site has been recommended as an MCZ by the Balanced Seas Regional Project for subtidal mixed sediments, subtidal coarse sediments and subtidal sands and gravels (see the Balanced Seas Final report). 

It has been a really interesting site to video as there are lots of exciting and colourful animals living on the cobbles, boulders and bedrock. Some areas are overrun by brittlestars of several different species, whilst some areas have none.
 

 

Brittlestar bed, including the Common brittlestar, Ophiothrix fragilis (we also saw the black brittlestar, Ophiocomina nigra) 

Below you can see some more examples of the fantastic invertebrates that we have spotted this morning...

 

 Dahlia anemone with brittlestars and sponges

Common sunstar (Crossaster papposus) with Dead Men's Fingers, sponges and a Queen scallop

 

Potato crisp bryozoan (Pentapora foliacea)

 

There are also a lot of sponges growing at this site and they are amazingly diverse in shape, colour, size and form. Below you can see an example of the golf ball sponge and the yellow hedgehog sponge.

 

 Golf ball sponge (Tethya citrina)

Yellow hedgehog sponge (Polymastia boletiformis)

So, the only challenge now remaining for us is to get out of the habit of eating breakfast at midnight, lunch at 4am, a snack at 7:30am and dinner at midday! 

At the end of our shift we will start steaming back to Lowestoft where we will be getting off. The staff and crew of the Cefas Endeavour will, however, continue survey work in the North Sea to support the MCZ Project.

Huge thanks go to the crew and Cefas colleagues who have made our stay on Endeavour such a brilliant experience.

Test yourself!

A quick mid-shift posting to let you know of a chance to test your marine knowledge.  Our partners Cefas have posted a plankton quiz on their blog "It's life Jim, but not as we know it". 

Match the 5 planktonic larvae with their adult forms - answers will come tomorrow.  No time for postcards - just a warm feeling for getting the right answers!

planktonic larvae - gone on, try your hand at identification

Take up the challenge on the Cefas blog.

Little did they know...

The Nightshift (midnight to noon) went to bed thinking that at the start of their shift we would be on passage east towards an additional site south of the Isle of Wight (so called 'Wight-Barfleur Extension, of which more in a future post).

Filling in the gap - the white triangle

Since then our plans have changed and we are now gathering multibeam echosounder data for an area of the Western Channel rMCZ for which we don't have detailed data.  The multibeam data provides an acurate picture of the shape of the seabed, but the 'backscatter' of the echoes can be further analysed to give an indication of what the seabed type is.  This can then the confirmed ("ground-truthed") by the camera and grab samples that we've already taken.

Indicative survey lines - there are really 30+ lines

The process of collecting this full-coverage multibeam data involved steaming along a series of parallel lines 300m apart.  The map on the right gives an  idea of the lines we are following - but in reality there will be over 30 lines.  It will take approximately 20 hours to complete this piece of work.  It keeps the helmsman busy as he steers a 3000 tonne, 78m ship within metres of a pre-determined line, but for the science staff its not the most exciting aspect of cruise...

Data acquisition

Two echo-sounder systems working at different frequencies are being run at the same time.  Between them they generate about 400mb of data per hour, which means there is a lot of processing work to be done to produce the final images.  To get accurate results a number of additional factors have to be compensated for: sound velocity through the water, ships heading, tidal height, and ships motion.  

Ultimately, the processed data will yield a detailed seabed image.  The example below shows an area north of Anglesey.

Drumlins, north of Anglesey

Last night shift at Western Channel

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!

Falmouth farewell

The decision to head north from the Western Channel to the South East of Falmouth rMCZ turned out to be a winner.  The sea was significantly calmer and the boat was able to work round the clock.  In fact as I write this we're now back at Western Channel (still a bit 'swelly' but not too bad) having completed the Falmouth site completely.  The forecast looks good for the next few days so we should be busy.

The last post on the blog highlighted some of the life seen on camera. The grabs too continue to turn up interesting species although there's not time during the survey to necessarily identify them fully.  That will happen when the samples are processed.

Goby

Amphipods

Artica Islandica shell from SE Falmouth

Nut crab

Circomphalus casina (with the ridges) and Acteon tornatilis technically a sea slug

Cornish detour

Late in the evening we arrived to the site South-east of Falmouth, where the sea was thankfully calmer. This site has been recommended as an MCZ for subtidal coarse sediment and subtidal sand (see Finding Sanctuary's Final Report).

We've started our shift doing video camera tows to find out more about the sediment and select the stations where we could collect grab samples of sediment.

Early in the morning we were joined once again by a pod of 15 to 20 common dolphins, which swam alongside the ship for a while.

On the videos we've taken today we've seen quite a few exciting marine animals, including several lesser spotted dogfish, Atlantic mackerel, Atlantic horse mackerel, smelt, dragonet, thick back sole, monkfish, gurnard, and an octopus! You can see a short video of the octopus below. Enjoy!

Atlantic mackerel (in blue), Scomber scombrus, amongst other fish (Atlantic horse mackerel and smelt)

Octopus from JNCC on Vimeo.

Weather diversion

Our site in the Western Channel is very exposed to weather coming from the southwest which is just what we got earlier today (or yesterday).  By lunchtime, the conditions got too strong for safe working - the risk is when deploying and recovering the grab/sledge.   Always have a plan B - in our case it was to steam north to the rMCZ at South East of Falmouth.  Closer inshore the swell wasn't as bad and we could work safely.  We'll sample this relatively small rMCZ before returning to Western Channel later in the week when the weather should be better.

Preparing to recover the camera sledge as the waves are picking up

Once the sledge leaves the water it can start to swing as the boat rolls.
Endeavour's crew are well practised and got the sledge aboard safely, but this was the last tow for the moment.

The view from the bridge.

When we were able to sample with the Hamon grab, many of the station yielded 8-10 litres of  this 'biogenic' sand (made by animal processes rather than geological ones).  Its made of shells and urchin spines.

 The English Channel is a busy place and we've seen a lot more shipping here than at the sites in the Celtic Sea. One edge of the Western Channel rMCZ is the border into French waters and the skipper was very conscious of not straying over the line.  The bad weather has less of an effect when your vessel is the size of this container ship.

A well-laden container ship heading east up the Channel.

The gulls and gannets seemed to enjoy the high winds and put on  a  display or their flying skills.