August 15, 2010
Northern Ibiza. Dives II. The last day of the campaign.
Like on land, the cliff walls of Ibiza’s northern coast fall 30 or 40 metres into the sea. Today we chose to dive off Margaritas Island and Punta Torretas, but there are so many options and we would have liked to sample other areas as well. Unfortunately, today is the last day of the campaign and we don’t have any more time.
Today we documented large sections of the Mediterranean madreporarian Cladocora caespitosa off Punta Torretas and the caves in Margartias Island, full of a wide variety of species including crustaceans, especially Plesionika shrimp. Now we are heading to San Antonio to drop off two of the divers. The rest of us will be sailing for another 80 miles or so to Burriana, Valencia, where the Oceana Ranger will be docked, until it is transferred to Sagunto for the winter. It has been two months of campaigning, almost 200 hours with the ROV and more than 30 dives, during which we’ve seen areas that are in good and bad states of conservation and threatened to various degrees. Now we must analyse and prepare all the information we’ve collected in order to precisely describe the species and habitats we’ve documented, as well as the types of seabeds, communities, threats, states of conservation and possibilities for recovering and/or conserving these areas. types of seabeds, communite, communitellected in order to achieve a precise description of the speices and habiatatsuntil i
Thanks to all who’ve made this campaign possible and to those who’ve followed us day by day reading this on board diary.
See you next year.