Introduction
Diary
	13 March
	12 March
	11 March
	10 March
	9 March
Participants

 

 

R/V Pelagia Cruise BIOSYS 2007
Thursday, 15 March 2006	ROV video footage at Fjellknausene deep water coral reefs (Norway)     Mattijs preparing ROV launch
A new day with new chances for living coral. Actually the day started at 00.00 hours with a discussion about a big hole in the seafloor spotted during the multibeam survey on our transit to Soester Fjord. Tomas Lundalv came up and informed that he spotted a hole of an relative depth of 120 meters completed circle with a diameter of approx 1/3 nautical mile. Suggestion came that it could be a meteor hole or hiding place for submarines of the cold war period. Other suggestions were that it might be a black hole and if investigated the RV PELAGIA would be sucked in. More wiser suggestions were there is something wrong with the multibeam. But Govert van Noort of the NIOZ with knowledge on the geology of the ice ages, said very firmly “it is impissible” (as trying to say impossible). A good laughter, a new round at the bar and the hole was named from that moment on “The impissible hole”. To cut the story short: The captain informed that with a new survey line the hole was nicely covered with soundings and thus disappeared.
Anyway this gives an idea on the good mood we were now the permit was there and sampling with boxcore could go on its way. We went further out to the spots of interest for video footage. The SEAfoundation was invited to give assistance on close-up ROV video footage for education and outreach on cold water corals together with another cruise participant, Michael Laterveer, who collects some material for the Oceanium at Rotterdam Zoo. For SEAfoundation it was a last minute call since when it became apparent, that the ROV from TMBL was not brought onboard and the SEAfoundation was willing to step in with her ROV system Zeelandis. To gain technical and operational experience with this low cost type of ROV in combination with a ship like R/V Pelagia and her hoisting system. On very short notice a “ROV garage” was made by the NIOZ technician Leon Wuis, on an old box core frame used for video transects. And after a couple of trials an operationally and technically workable set-up was established. Due to the nature of the deep water corals further experience was gained in using the ROV's options to move in a “hovering” way instead of “hopping” over the sea bottom. We first went down to a spot of roughly 100 m but it showed no live coral. We went thus back to a different spot known to have live corals. A perfect trip with the ROV was made to a new record depth of 120 m with great footage of living deep water coral reefs at the Fjellknausene area in Norwegian waters.   Ing. Mattijs de Lange Bsc. Seafoundation, the Netherlands