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June 9, 2016

Marine ecosystems 22 miles west off the Island of Gozo

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At 6.45am the alarm goes off and a new day of researching the depths of the ocean floors where no sun light gets to. It’s a universe full of creatures that adapt to life at such depths.

At around 300ms down, the ROV manages to captures fantastic images of a bed of sub-fossil brachiopods. Little did we expect that, later on, we’d have some bad luck with the ROV cable when it got damaged after getting stuck in one of the Ranger’s propellers.

Despite everyone’s efforts on-board to get the most out of each day, the sea is can be ruthless, making it hard to do our work on-board. A little disappointed, we headed back to port to find a solution to the problem and to keep fighting to save our precious Mediterranean sea.

We’ve got around 50 days left of the expedition and without a shadow of a doubt these waters will delight us with expected appearances – like the one today from a shark with six gills, also known as  Bluntnose sixgill shark.

However, as with all oceans on our planet and as we’re observing day after day, traces of human activity is affecting both the health of our oceans and our species.