August 25, 2009
Pta. La Tiñosa, SE Lanzarote. Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Last night we stayed in Puerto Calero in order to be able to continue our work today around LIC Cagafrecho or Punta la Tiñosa.
Early in the morning, we submerged the ROV for approximately 3 hours. We traced a perpendicular transect to the coast, from 356 m to 55.4 m depth, covering a distance of only 0.4 nautical miles, approximately. The archipelago’s last platform is so narrow in some places that the seabeds drop suddenly to great depths. This allows us to see the different depths occupied by different species in one dive.
The NE wind started to blow in the afternoon, force 6, so we had to forget about our idea of a second dive with the ROV. We returned to port and took advantage to do some shopping.
The divers dove off the shoal of Playa Grande beach and, thanks to the collaboration of Jose from the Squalo dive centre, they did a night dive off the small dock on Playa Chica beach.
When we returned to port, we invited Vidal Martín Martel, the director of the Cetacean Museum of the Canary Islands and president of the Society for the Study of Cetaceans in the Canary Islands – scientific NGO focused on cetacean conservation and the dissemination of information about the marine environment of the Canary Islands – to come aboard the Ranger, so we were with him and his team discussing the importance of protecting the seabeds of the archipelgo.