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June 7, 2012

Coming to a close

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Jesús Molino - Diver and Deck coordinatorThis morning we sailed to Kattegat from Copenhagen. Once we were in the area, we spent the day taking seabed samples with trawls and diving, and, in between, we packed all the gear we don’t use to send it back.  Yesterday most of our colleagues left. Enrique Talledo, the video cameraman who has worked so hard in the last few days, editing into the small hours, and Carlos Suárez, who has also had his fair share of work, arranging and copying his pictures into DVDs and hard disks, left yesterday. The ROV and its operators, José Manuel Sáez “Pisha” and Josep Fleta, have also gone home.

Today’s dive was very good, at only 5 m deep. The light was perfect and visibility amazing, compared to what we are used to around here. Full of seaweed, flatfish, crabs, isopods… The seabed was covered in mussels and some jellyfish. Water temperature was about 8º, but given our activity and habit of diving below 5º it even seemed warm to us. Back in the surface, we took seabed samples using the trawl in specific areas close to each other so we could make a full analysis of the area.

There are only a few of us left to take and analyse these samples. In just 4 days this campaign will be over, and we are making the best use of time we can. The deck is still full of tubes, pots, containers and plastic envelopes in which tiny specimens are transported and examined with a magnifying glass to be then archived and catalogued. Only 4 of the usual 12 crew members are still here, but we are as busy as usual, working to meet the last objectives of this campaign.