And we've arrived! Blog#4

After travelling from the East of England we have finally made it to Greater Haig Fras MCZ, which lies to the west of Cornwall. Since arriving at the site, the boat has been a flurry of activity. We have busied ourselves collecting multibeam sonar data for seabed mapping as well as beginning our camera and grab sampling.

Matt having a look at some night time multibeam collection. © JNCC/ Cefas

As the weather here has been favourable so far, we have been able to take good quality images of the seabed. Excitingly, we have already seen plenty of burrows in the imagery collected, indicating the presence of sea-pens and burrowing megafauna which we mentioned in an earlier post.

The team here are also happy to have begun collecting and sieving grab samples, which allows us to find specimens of the animals that live at the site which we preserve and store for later identification. This is a muddy job, but continuing consumption of biscuits and cups of tea helps! Even with a dash of seasickness, everyone remains in high spirits.

Keep up to date with all the latest from survey by following this blog, and using #CEND0719 on our Twitter and Facebook profiles!

Survey Fun Fact:

The Sea-pen and burrowing megafauna habitat in the deeper mud areas of the site, is listed as OSPAR threatened and/or declining. This means that the site has been highlighted for protection in order to maintain and/or restore a favourable habitat. With this habitat supporting species such as Nephrops norvegicus, sea pens and mud shrimps, you can see why it is an important place to understand. 

Away we go! CEND0719 Blog #3

Ropes off and we’ve set sail! 

After departing Lowestoft in some fine sunny conditions we’re transiting through the southern North Sea down through the English Channel. 

The scientific party have been putting the time to good use, setting up the survey equipment such as grabs and sieving tables, adjusting to day and night shift patterns and carrying out the all-important ship safety orientations and emergency drills. 

We should be arriving at our first sampling station in Lyme Bay shortly to collect samples for the Clean Seas Environmental Programme (CSEMP) before transiting to Greater Haig Fras through today into Monday morning where we can start the main sampling programme. Watch this space for updates on how the survey is progressing and some interesting insights into life and work onboard.

Keep up to date on all the goings on on survey by following this blog, and using #CEND0719 on our twitter and facebook profiles. 

Greater Haig Fras MCZ Blog#2

Greater Haig Fras Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) is an offshore Marine Protected Area off the Cornish Coastline which covers 2,041km² of seabed, larger than the size of West Sussex county. Greater Haig Fras MCZ is around 120km from the UK coastline and is designated for its sediment habitats, which range from fine muds to coarse and mixed sediments.

This site was designated in 2016 to afford protection to many of the species that live on and in the sediment. These species, such as the mud shrimp and Norway lobster alongside many others, help oxygen to filter deeper into the seabed and through this release nutrients back into the water column. Because of this, the site is also designated to protect Sea-Pen and Burrowing Megafauna communities, which are included on the OSPAR Threatened and/or Declining Habitat list for the North-East Atlantic.

JNCC and Cefas previously visited this site in 2012, and used similar methods to those we plan to use for this survey collecting sediment samples and images for later analysis.

Sediment seen at Greater Haig Fras in 2012 © JNCC/Cefas 

Norway lobster a burrowing species ©JNCC/Cefas

Survey Fun Fact:

Mud habitats protected within this site have a particle size of between 3.9 – 62.5µm in diameter, similar to the size range between a human red blood cell and a human hair.

New JNCC/Cefas Survey in May, CEND0719 - Blog#1

It’s that time of year again, another joint survey between JNCC and Cefas. This time the scientists are venturing into the Atlantic, heading south off the Cornish coastline on the RV Endeavour for 19 days to visit Greater Haig Fras Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ). This survey aims to build on our monitoring efforts to understand more about these important sites and provide robust management advice.

The scientists out on this survey will be collecting a large variety of information from within these protected areas to improve our understanding of the animals that live within these environments. This information will come in the form of photos, sediment samples, videos and maps of the seafloor. This work will all help scientists to understand what lies beneath the waves at these two sites.

Greater Haig Fras MCZ is 120km off of the Cornish coastline and the protected area covers over 2000km² of seabed, similar to the West Sussex county. A later blog post will delve a little deeper into this site and why it’s protected so keep your eyes peeled for the later blog!

Lowestoft Ahoy! - Blog #6

Hello once more from the Cefas Endeavour, where we are nearing the end of this most recent JNCC and Cefas Marine Protected Area (MPA) monitoring survey.

The past few days have flown by as we have finished off the last bits of camera work and Hamon grabbing in both MPAs. We have spent the last day or so of the survey as we began, by collecting multibeam bathymetry and backscatter data. This time, our target was an area of suspected rock in Offshore Brighton Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) which we sampled with our camera system earlier this week. By using the multibeam and imagery data together we hope to update the map of the extent of the rock in this part of the MCZ. Once we have completed this work, we will make our way back to the Endeavour’s home port of Lowestoft (Suffolk), where this survey will end.

Camera stations and the mulitbeam survey area at the rock habitats of Offshore Brighton MCZ © JNCC/Cefas 

All in all, we have collected 76 Hamon grab samples, completed over 200 camera transects and over 2500km of multibeam bathymetry and backscatter.  

View from the bridge back in Lowestoft. Welcome home Joey and James! © JNCC

We have enjoyed very good weather and sea conditions on this survey, particularly given the time of year, and I am glad to report that we have managed to complete all of our planned objectives. Even with the superb weather, this would not have been possible without the hard work of the crew and our Cefas colleagues aboard, so I will close this account with a huge thank you to everyone involved!

You can catch-up on the survey by following JNCC, Cefas and the survey hashtag #CEND0119 on Twitter, or by joining us on Facebook.

Survey Fun Fact

There has been a settlement at Lowestoft, the most easterly point of the British Isles, for over a millennium. The Viking origin of the name Lowestoft – made up of the name Hlothver and the suffix – toft, meaning homestead – points towards the importance of the sea and the people and products it delivered to Lowestoft.

http://www.visit-northsuffolk.co.uk/articles/a-brief-history-of-lowestoft-famous-faces-and-significant-places

A Colourful Cast at Offshore Brighton Rock - Blog #5

Greetings again from the CEND0119 team. Having completed the bulk of our planned sampling at Offshore Overfalls, we are now at Offshore Brighton MCZ. More information about this MCZ and our plans here can be seen in the first blog post for this survey 

Our survey operations in Offshore Brighton have so far focussed on the collection of still images and video from the seabed using the drop-frame camera system, these provide our team on the boat with plenty to talk about and try and identify. The drop-frame camera is also equipped with other sensors used to measure parameters such as temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen. These measurements provide us with some key information about what the environment on the seabed is like, whether it changes across the site and potentially clues as to why the animals we are finding are living where they are.

We have begun our sampling in a ‘rocky’ part of the MCZ, a substrate vital for sessile (non-moving) animals like sponges, bryozoans (sea mosses), anemones and sea squirts as well as providing nooks and crannies for mobile species including crustaceans and some fish species.

Though more redolent of David than Richard Attenborough¹, in our short time here we have nonetheless encountered a colourful cast of characters, some of whom you can see below.

© JNCC and Cefas 2019

Bright green jewel anemones (Corynactis viridis) attached to a rock at Offshore Brighton MCZ

© JNCC and Cefas 2019

Sponges, including a breadcrumb sponge (likely Halichondria panicea, encrusting a rock at Offshore Brighton MCZ. Scallops (likely Aequipecten opercularis) have also anchored themselves here using their cementlike “byssal” thread.

© JNCC and Cefas 2019

Animals growing amongst the compacted gravel at Offshore Brighton MCZ. Here we have the bryozoan Horn Wrack (Flustra foliacea), and two sponges; a yellow Hedgehog sponge (Polymastia boletiformis), and a branching sponge called Mermaid’s Glove (Raspailia ramosa).

Survey fun fact

The site area of Offshore Brighton MPA is 862km² which is roughly ten times the size of Brighton!

¹ Wondering about Richard Attenborough's connection? He played the lead character, "Pinkie", in none other than the classic 1948 adaptation of Graham Greene's 1938 novel "Brighton Rock"

Our Historic Waters - Blog #4

Hello from Offshore Overfalls MCZ, where the team have been working hard to finish off collection of the multibeam data. Whilst collecting this data we have seen a few shipwrecks, which has added some excitement to the early hours of the morning for the night shift. I have written about how some of these ships came to be on the seafloor below. These shipwrecks were identified as being of interest before sailing, in collaboration with Historic England.

One of the wrecks we have seen is the SS Alaska, which sunk in 1939. The vessel sank in collision with a British cargo vessel SS Dotterel on 15^th November 1939. Two men were sadly lost in the collision however the remaining crew were rescued by other vessels. The location of this vessel was not confirmed until recently as a number of different positions were given for this wreck although salvage operations directed at SS Alaska are recorded as having occurred between 1947 and 1951.

Wreck of the SS Alaska © Cefas/JNCC

HMS Implacable is an additional wreck that we have been keeping an eye out for on this survey. This vessel was scuttled by the Royal Navy in the English Channel in 1949, but it was built in Rochefort (France) 149 years earlier in 1800 as the 74-gun ship Daguay-Trouin. She saw action at Trafalgar in 1805 and was captured by the British in the battles aftermath and renamed HMS Implacable.

In the 1940s she was deemed too expensive to maintain and on 2^nd December 1949 she was scuttled in the English Channel. The stern section and figurehead were removed beforehand and given to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich where they can still be viewed today. Finding evidence of this wreck is very exciting as we were not sure how much of HMS Implacable's wooden structure would have survived 70 years on the seabed. 

Polandia is the third and final vessel that we have seen on this survey. Polandia was a steam-driven liner built in Germany in 1898 weighing 2,238 ton and original named Paul. She was captured by the British in 1914 and renamed Polandia only to be sunk claiming the lives of all 30 crew members after being attacked by a German U-boat on 10^th or 11^th March 1917.

These are just a few of the wrecks we have seen on the recent survey from the multibeam data out of the 50 wreck site records held for this area. Having completed the acoustic survey that we had planned for Offshore Overfalls, the team are now shifting focus to collection of photographs and videos of the seafloor within this MCZ. Steering clear of all known wrecks in this area to ensure our drop camera doesn’t join the many wrecks down at the bottom of the channel, the team are ready to get a closer view of what animal life can be found in this area.

The weekend weather is sadly looking to break the trend of calm seas we have been enjoying so far with the wind due to pick up and so the boat may be moving around a little more than previously. Fingers crossed my sea-legs have kicked in and the copious amounts of ginger biscuits at hand will keep the sea sickness at bay. 

For further updates before and during the survey - watch this space; follow JNCC, Cefas and the survey hashtag #CEND0119 on Twitter, or join us on Facebook.