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July 6, 2013

Saturday 6 July 2013

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© OCEANA / Xavier Pastor

 

Today is the last day of fieldwork. The rest of work will be done from different venues and it´ll consist of video reviewing, data collection, documentation, presentations and a long etc… The ROV team: Xavier, Maribel, Albert and Mike, worked from the other side of the bay on shore operations and we (the divers) drove about 12 miles to carry out two more immersions. After a smooth and comfortable but somewhat long journey, we arrived at the first diving spot. The visibility was bad, but not worse than in many other spots we had been so far; we’re actually pretty used to have no visibility beyond the first three meters. The bottom is covered with sea grass. It´s a really pretty meadow, with plants that are up to a meter high. Some gobies and little more. The water is much warmer at the surface, at about 16 degrees, but at the bottom, we are at no more than 13 degrees. We returned to the shore to have lunch, rest a bit, and get rid of some of the nitrogen from the first dive.

During lunch the Polish national television arrived and interviewed Andrzej and Gorka (who had already given them many shots, and even an edited video for the program).  We gave them the DVD, answered their questions, and they filmed us getting ready, working with the zodiac and the second dive. This TV-thing is becoming kind of usual, so the first day nerves are history now.

15 miles to the second diving spot. This will be the last dive, so that both, the photo team (Claus and Carlos) and the video team (Gorka and I) decided to “squeeze” the most out of this last dive. The depth is slightly larger so the temperature is lower. The bottom consisted of sand and mud with large areas of mussels. Some flatfish, these are pretty less asleep than those we found in the northern Baltic, temperature makes them sleepy and  they come out quick if you’re not extremely careful. After an 80-minute immersion, we left the bottom and found a surface that was being stirred up because of the strong wind. Ruben and Andrzej helped us to take off our equipment and then we went back to the boat. It took us 40 minutes to get to the port. We traveled around 52 miles between the morning and the afternoon and both immersions took around 2 hours and 15 minutes.

We phoned the ROV team and it seems that it has been quite a very productive day for them too! After the ROVs they packed everything so it could be sent back to Spain. Finally at about 21:00 we all met at the hotel for dinner. Tomorrow there will be only 3000 kms distance between our Madrid´s office and us.