Introduction

Diary

Participants

 

R/V Pelagia Cruise HERMIONE /CoralFISH
	Diary overview
Friday, 30 October	Fred in the kitchen making a dessert flambe.
We are sailing to the south to the Galicia Bank area. The Galicia Bank is a seamount that rises from 5000m to about 600m below sealevel. On the top are also corals, but we are going there for the deep-sea soft bottom fauna. Last year, also in October, we have done research there with the Pelagia at depths between 1200 and 3000m.   That research was done in the frame work of the BIOFUN project, a project funded by the European Science Foundation. With several European countries we study the biodiversity of the deep-sea bottom fauna from Bacteria to megafauna (large animals like fish), and how the ecosystem functions.
For that last item we measure the circumstances in the deep-sea, like temperature, current speed, the number and quality (in the sense of food) of particles in the bottom water, and how much of this material is deposited at the seafloor (and thus available for the animals living there). Of course we like to know how these circumstances vary during the year. For that purpose we have deployed two moorings with autonomous measuring devices (currentmeter, sedimenttrap, and turbidity and fluorescence meter) at 1900 and 3000m. We hope they are still there, and we soon will found out as we are now on our way to recover them. The weather is reasonable and the Pelagia can keep a good speed, and the expected time of arrival will be tomorrow in the afternoon.   Marc Lavaleye