Legacy: 2016: LIFE BaĦAR Expedition

“People who do not know that a sailboat is a living creature will never understand anything about boats and the sea”. A fine phrase from a fine seaman like Moitessier. It sums up perfectly those who live and care for boats, which is not something everyone will understand.  Although the Ranger only takes to water … Read more

My name’s Jorge Blanco and I’m a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Analyst at Oceana. Bad weather has forced us to stay at port again so we make the most of that time to carry out “office work”. For me, that means working on the results from the MultiBeam coordination meeting that took place yesterday in … Read more

Today, after two days of bad weather, we took on the wind and decided to set off towards the north of the Island of Gozo to do some snorkeling dives in search of sand banks. I had forgot to tell you that as well as do the cooking on-board I also accompany the videographer, Enrique … Read more

Here I am joining the Oceana and LIFE Ba?AR Malta expedition, as part of the ROV team! After a few days with the ROV on-deck to carry out some repairs on the umbilical cable – one of the most important parts of this little robot – it was time to test it in the water. … Read more

There’s not much to say when the wind keeps you at port all day. Before midday I managed to finish the work I had pending; sorting and classifying photos and making back-up copies. I also had a swim in the sea after the wind had swept away an “army” of jellyfish offshore. The wind had … Read more

As head of diving, my task is to have all the diving equipment ready, set and above all, safe for a productive dive. On deck the work is always a bit more stressful and requires a lot of concentration and organization pre- and post-dive. As we make our way to the diving area, with the … Read more

Today we headed off for the spectacular sea cliffs to the north of the island. We cast off from the port quite late… and just in time to see the typical little Mediterranean boats, yachts and motor boats, whose captains are not the most conscientious of skippers.  And as we passed the small island of … Read more

Well, as today is a day in which we can’t go out to sea (for technical reasons, inevitable in this type of campaign), I’ll give you all a summary on where the campaign is at now. We’re now a quarter way (exactly 23.8%) through our campaign here. And we can’t believe it. Some of the … Read more

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 … Read more

I’ve just recently joined the expedition in Malta and today we’ve set sail towards one of the furthest research areas we’ll be going to, where we’ll be for the next three days. The weather, together with good sea conditions means it’s a perfect day to be sailing for 4 hours to reach our first sampling … Read more