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June 20, 2013

Thrusday 20 June 2013 – Study of the archipelago’s shallow waters

BY: Christina Abel

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© OCEANA / Carlos Minguell

 

Today the plan was to study the coastal areas inside the archipelago, where the species and communities are very different for what we filmed yesterday in the more open water. We had scheduled to do five ROVs in locations found through collaboration with a local biologist. All the places had shallow water and were located close to skerries or small islands.

Before heading out to do the fieldwork, my colleague Magnus Eckeskog was interviewed by the Swedish TV station TV4 at the quayside. Thereafter we headed out with the zodiac from the small marina, and cruised around in the beautiful archipelago till we arrived at the first ROV location.

The five ROVs revealed a very similar seabed: mud with some mussels buried in it, star fish, and at some places eelgrass meadows. As it was difficult to film the eelgrass meadows with the ROV, due to its propellers; besides that the propellers were shaking up the mud so the visibility got poorer, there was also a risk of getting the propellers infiltrated into the eelgrass. Therefore we planned to do a scuba dive in one of the eelgrass location in the afternoon, in hope to get better footage of the eelgrass meadows in the archipelago.

Tomorrow will be our last day in this beautiful archipelago, before we head south to do studies at Hanö Bay.