Oceana is undertaking a six-week Baltic Sea expedition in 2012. The studied areas are defined based on government reactions to our marine protected areas proposals, suggestions from other NGOs and the environmental ministries of several countries.
Amazing ocean-life discoveries
Did you know how many amazing and unusual features lie deep in our ocean, some of whose uniqueness allows whole ecosystems to live within them? Here are some Oceana discovered in European waters on our research expeditions:
3D yellow tree coral (Dendrophyllia cornigera, Galicia - Spain)
The 2012 Oceana Baltic Expedition is about to finish. While we keep carrying out the intensive fishing fleet investigation on the field in which we have been involved in the last days, we are gradually approaching Copenhagen again. In that harbor we will be ending this year’s voyage, after almost two months at sea.
Esta mañana hemos salido a Kattegat desde Copenhague. Una vez en la zona, hemos pasado el día tomando muestras del fondo con dragas y buceos, y en los ratos intermedios, empaquetando todo el equipo que no utilizamos para ser enviado de vuelta. Ayer ya marcharon la mayoría de los compañeros. Enrique Talledo, el videógrafo que tanto trabajo ha tenido estos últimos días editando hasta altas horas de la noche, y Carlos Suárez, nuestro fotógrafo, que también ha pasado lo suyo organizando fotos y copiando sus fotos en DVD y discos duros, ya marcharon ayer.
After having a day with nice weather yesterday, today is foggy, windy, and rainy. Our plan for today is to make a scuba dive near a buoy in Kattegat and collect more bottom samples. The divers jumped into the big waves from the zodiac, and found an exposed sandy bottom, with many starfish, but else not much life.
This morning we sailed to Kattegat from Copenhagen. Once we were in the area, we spent the day taking seabed samples with trawls and diving, and, in between, we packed all the gear we don’t use to send it back. Yesterday most of our colleagues left.
This picture is one of our favorite of the week.
The day started a little earlier than our average day, with an rov dive before breakfast.
Not much was observed during the dive and the rov was back on board after less than an hour of diving.
The boat quickly proceeded to the next location, which was a small bank at about 16 meters depth. This was the position for our afternoon scuba dive.
Today, after a few hours on a train from Copenhagen I have arrived to Stockholm, to finally join our Expedition team again. Unfortunately we can’t just stay at the sea for the whole time and other duties called me back to the office about 3 weeks ago, but today I got back on board of Hanse Explorer.
We arrived to Stockholm at 09:00 am today, after four hours of a very nice sailing through the myriad of charming islands of the archipelago. In this port we have a change of Baltic team members. Christina Abel (Dk) is leaving the ship temporally, while Andrzej Bialas (Pol) is joining for another period of time onboard.
This time we dropped anchor in Stockholm. The ROV team receive the visit of a technician for maintenance of this delicate and extremely expensive instrument. Others go out for a walk and to visit the city. I meet a Swedish colleague whom I hadn’t seen in 3 years and who is a good family friend. We met many years ago in the Canary Islands and my wife and I have travelled with her to such exotic destinations as Egypt to dive in the Red Sea.
Today was an odd day. A few days ago, we published the news that we had located about a dozen dead seals near the Bogskär lighthouse (Åland Island). This news was widely picked up by the media, and some countries are interested in finding out the cause of these deaths. For this reason, we returned to the area together with Åland Island Coastguards.
As we sailed south, water temperature rose. Now we are on parallel 60. We have come down from parallel 65, the latitude of central Alaska, northern Iceland, and the Bering Strait, all very cold areas. These days, water temperature has risen to a “warm” 4ºC, almost 4 degrees more than in the North.
The days go by with our expedition activities. Scuba diving on waters shallower than 20 meters, ROV operations with the “Hanse Explorer” on anchor up to 50 m, and drifting with the ROV when in deeper waters down to the bottom this northern part of the Bothnian Sea. 160 meters are the largest deeps in this area.
After a brief morning meeting, we went out in the Zodiac's to dive two different locations.
The locations are within an area Finland is planning to make into a MPA (Marine Protected Area). The findings of the dives will be reported to the Finish government to help with their assessment of the area.
These days we are spending in the very north of the Bothnian Bay. We are lucky with the weather, as the sun is shining and the sea is incredible clam.
Today I got up, like most days, at 8 in the morning, after a night in which sunlight woke me up at around 5. Funny, isn’t it? Days here are so long that they almost make the night disappear.
Today we will be performing several study methods: trawl, CTD, ROV and diving. We will be exploring various depths and ecosystems.
We are in the northern area of the Bothnia Gulf, were waters are calmer and the salinity drops to limits that few marine species can bear. Biodiversity is highly reduced here, and we hardly found any fish of commercial interest.
Straight after breakfast the two Zodiacs were launched. The scuba gear was assembled, the dry suits half way on, while we were discussing the dive to come.
We arrived in the harbour of Mariehamn in the morning, after having passed tens of smaller islands. Mariehamn is the capital of Åland Islands, which is an autonomous Swedish-speaking territory under Finland. Åland Islands consists of thousands of islands, situated at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia.
This is my second day on board the Hanse Explorer, after the new photographers and camera operators have arrived. After my great experience last year, I find again an expedition crew that work perfectly and try to give their best.
We are in Finland, and the day starts with a routine task, dropping the underwater robot (ROV) into the cold, dark waters of the Baltic Sea. It will be immersed several times throughout the day while technicians, biologists and the heads of the expedition follow every detail of the scarce animal life that appears on the screens.
Today has been a day of work in harbour. The Hanse Explorer was alongside in Helsinki port, and some members of our team, led by Hanna Paulomäki, attended a Baltic Sea Seminar organized by the Baltic Sea Action Group, a Finnish NGO dedicated to get commitments from different stakeholders (government institutions, industry, other NGOs) to carry out initiatives to improve the status of this sea. The Seminar was opened by the President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö.
Estamos en Helsinki. Gorka (video) y Carlos Minguell (fotógrafo) vuelan mañana a casa y llegan Carlos Suárez (fotógrafo) y Enrique Talledo (video).
We are in Helsinki. Gorka (video) and Carlos Minguell (photographer) are flying home tomorrow and Carlos Suarez (photographer) and Enrique Talledo (video) will be arriving.
At around 06:00 this morning we lifted the anchor and were ready to leave the relative calm waters of our anchorage, to set out to continue our rov
operations in the EEZ (Economic Exclusive Zone). Very quickly we realized the weather had not really improved enough to safely launch the rov. By 07:00 we were anchored again.
We normally say that the weather gives us a rest when it is improving after many days of bad weather. But in this case is the opposite. We have rested only one day in the last 18 and the bad weather has obliged us to stop for a while.
Today we planned to dive with the ROV near the Hanko Peninsula (FIN), but the military authorities in Finland, have not allowed us to submerge the ROV in its territorial waters, so we decided to head to exclusive economic zone waters for our work.
Today’s goal is to find, using the ROV, a group of small mountains that rise from 50 to 15 m deep, checking that they really exist and can be filmed. We reach our first stop, the ship drops anchor and after a quick breakfast we start to work. The ROV has some trouble surfacing which is solved by technicians.
In the past few days, Oceana has been working in the area around the Klints Bank, in the center of the Baltic Proper and in the shallow areas east of the Island of Gotland, to identify biological communities. We plan to provide this information to the Swedish Government so they can designate it as a protected area.
After having had to run from the weather, we spend the night for anchor, just outside Gotland, Sweden.
Klints bank is beautiful shallow area right in the middle of the Baltic Sea, next to the Gotland deep. It is one of the very few shallower spots in offshore waters and therefore provides an important area with valuable resources for plenty of creatures, including fish.
Today, we have been researching in and around Södra Midsjöbanken, an underwater hill or bank in the Swedish South part of the Baltic Proper. In the shallowest area the well-known rocks with mussels (Mytilus trossulus) covered by hyrdoids and bryozoans.
Aside from the important scientific data we gather to use in promoting the designation of Marine Protected Areas, one of the best (and my favorite) outcomes of our at-sea expeditions are the incredibly beautiful images that our photographers capture.
I’m happy to be back on the Hanse Explorer and ready to head to the Baltic Proper and northern parts of the Baltic Sea. Our first stop on the way north was Kriegers flak, an offshore bank that is shared between Denmark, Sweden and Germany. This is an area of interest for offshore wind farm.
Today we have made landfall in Copenhagen after eleven days of campaign in the Baltic sea, where we have carried out several surveys in the Kattegat area among the countries of Sweden and Denmark.
Today another sunny day dawned on a calm sea, as has been the case all these late April days. This is always good news, particularly for those who must spend many hours outdoors on board, although it is also good news for me: the sun fills the pictures with brightness and colours that don’t appear in the usual cloudy “Baltic grey” days.
We started the day with a ROV at not much depth. Our initial idea was to send the ROV to check whether the area might be worth it, as the ROV can remain at the bottom for as long as necessary. The area was worth it, and how! After a few hours’ filming, we put on our diving suits and jumped off the Hanse Explorer into these cold waters.
Last night our ROV was confronted with what is the worst enemy of the underwater robots: the lost fishing nets. While carrying a night operation, we detected an abandoned trawling net that was stuck on the sea bottom. While trying to avoid it, the ROV was caught in several of the ropes around the fishing gear. We started then a careful process of disentanglement maneuvering the robot propellers. But with no result. As the minutes were passing, the robot was hopelessly being paralyzed as in a spider web.
After leaving Helsingborg yesterday we spend most of the night making way to Djüpa Rännan West, about 5 miles out side the Göteborg Archipelago. With a depth of just over a hundred meters, it is one of the deepest places in Kattegat.
After exploring the Ven Island area yesterday we have arrived and docked in Helsingborg, Sweden today. Helsingborg is a city located between Sweden and Denmark in a narrow passage between the two countries’ shorelines called “The Sound”. The city which is often referred to as the Pearl of the Sound is home to some 130 000 people. Oceana’s presence here on this day is no coincidence. We have been invited to take part in a special event – 10th anniversary of the inauguration of the Dunker culture center. The house, beautifully located in city’s port area, was designed by the world famous Danish architect Kim Utzon.
Second day with the ROV dives in the Sound sampling bottoms around -30 meters to know how several biological communities have evolved. Haploops (those small crustaceans living in tubes) have almost disappeared; that is bad news. And horse mussels are present in small groups. Now, brittle stars cover most of the muddy beds in the area, together with small gobies, hermit crabs, some starfish… mainly scavengers. Yes, some flatfish taking advantage of this amount of food. And yesterday a thorn skate, but we are missing the important habitats that have sharply declined in here.
I have never been in the ship for more than couple hours. And to stay on board for not full 3 days looked challenging. As I am not a marine biologist and my profession is in any way related with nature and science, before coming to expedition I was concern about few questions “ What I will do? And how I could help?” First day, I was listening and observing how everybody was preparing for the expedition. Second day was thrilling there was made videos with ROV in Kattegat and was taken a sample of the bottom floor with a dredge. I always loved playing with sand and mud, so I offered my help to look for “treasure”. It was dark, cold, wet and muddy but excitement was higher than that. It was such happy and exciting moments to find different species hiding in that box full of mud.
You may remember last year around this time, we launched our first ever expedition into the Baltic Sea. It’s that time of year again! Our chartered research vessel, the Hanse Explorer, set sail yesterday.
Today was our first day of fieldwork of the 2012 expedition. Throughout the day we managed to conduct four surveys with the (ROV) in the area east of the Danish island of Anholt in Kattegat. We filmed lots of interesting habitats and communities. One of the more interesting organisms we met at 35 meters depth was the Norway lobster, Nephrops norvegicus, which is a target species for fishermen in Kattegat. We filmed the orange lobster while it was sitting in one of its characteristic holes, which they make in the mud. Another interesting thing we came across was an area with a beautiful creature called phosphorescent sea pen. This sea pen emits flashes of light, and it almost looks like a flower, as it a “stem” and has a strong red color (see picture).
Today at noon our chartered expedition vessel the “Hanse Explorer” left Copenhagen to start operations with the underwater robot (ROV) and divers in the Kattegat. That was after a 24 hour stopover in that harbor to load the last pieces of equipment on board. Before that, the Oceana ship had sailed from its shipyard in Bremen, Germany, down the Weser River until reaching the North Sea, then went up the Elba River and the Kiel Canal to the Baltic Sea. This is the beginning of our second Baltic expedition. The results of last years can be found in the habitats and fisheries reports recently published by Oceana.
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