July 8, 2010
Robot, scuba divers and CTD
Today we had to catch up on our work after yesterday’s failed attempt to go out and work, despite knowing that the weather forecast was quite bad. So we put our noses to the grindstone and began the long list of tasks for the day that include using both the ROV at several spots and the CTD for salinity, pressure and temperature measurements, and a dredger for obtaining seabed samples.
The proposed areas for placing wind turbines that we have visited with the ROV are again on exclusively muddy seabeds. Closer to land and in proposed protection areas, we continued to come across rocky seabeds plagued with large corals Dendrophyllia ramea, among which other cnidarians appeared such as Elisella paraplexauroides or Leptogorgia sarmentosa.
The divers, in turn, have taken very good shots of images that seem impossible to get if we consider how turbid the water is. The high quality and beauty of the images taken will serve both for describing the species and habitats present in the area and to educate others on how important it is to protect them.