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August 4, 2014

Nine ROV dives for the first day

© OCEANA / Enrique Talledo

 

After ten years of expeditions, once again another Oceana campaign kicks off.

This time, the goal is to document the seamounts in the Mallorca Channel through video and bionomic mapping.  It is now eight o’clock sharp, and the Cathedral of Palma is disappearing from view, and the bow of the ship is pointing towards the Cabrera archipelago.

In just a few hours, we will reach our first area of work: the Fort d’en Moreu, a coralligenous reef just outside the Eastern boundaries of the National Park of Cabrera.

This time we are not using the Ranger Vessel. For a number of reasons we have decided to charter the Coastal Ocean Research Vessel SOCIB, as it contains equipment that is large enough to help us reach the goal of our voyage.

Once we arrived along the designated points for the expedition, we launched the ROV (underwater robot) into the water nine times in ten hours. The day has been very productive. The sea beds that we have documented contain rhodoliths and banks of posidonia leaves, two important habitats in the Mediterranean Sea that need protection.