October 2, 2012
Ready to get into the Atlantic
According to the weather, we are going to get a break to work on the Gorringe bank. It may only be 2-3 days, so we have to make the best of it.
Today we are in port (Vilamoura) doing paperwork and waiting for the new Portuguese scientists to come on board. In the morning we’ll depart for the Gettysburg seamount and plan to return on Sunday October 7. Then we head back to the Mediterranean.
For the last three days we have been working with the University of Algarve to document areas where bottom trawling occurs, and where it doesn’t. We found some interesting things, like golf crinoids, deepwater corals (only a few, without forming reefs), muddy bottoms of crayfish and prawns, some corals and relatively unknown gorgonians (like Nephtheidae, the cauliflower coral which is normally found in cold waters in Norway and Iceland), etc.