Legacy: Mediterranean 2006

Today, we will take samples with the ROV in two areas within the park. One in the southeast and another in the north. The sea floors are sandy with large concentrations of sand urchins, especially Spatangus purpureus. In other areas, we spot large concentrations of rhizomes and dead Posidonia leaves which have been transported to … Read more

Today, we will enter the Cabrera National Park. We have a meeting early this morning with the park rangers in order to exchange information and decide in which areas we are going to work. They were extremely helpful. Many of them have spent various years here and they are very fond of this area. Those … Read more

In the end, we had to take shelter for the night in Porto Petro. In the morning, the storm had subsided and we set sail toward Cabrera. We did 2 transections with the robot in the limits of the Cabrera National Park in order to find out the state of the sea floors in the … Read more

The day does not start off well. The weather forecast is calling for force 3 and 4 winds from the southeast and southwest, but we also have a force 7 and 8 windstorm coming from the northeast. Obviously, we cannot continue our work and we must leave the area in search of shelter. We set … Read more

After verifying the bathymetry of the area at night, we are ready to submerge the robot early the next morning. This area has a depth of 110 meters and, although the weather is still not as good as we would like, the conditions are not all that bad to begin working. We find mixed sea … Read more

The weather has not improved but we will continue our efforts. We will attempt to descend along the side of the submarine mountain, Auxias Marc. The work is not easy to carry out due to the strong currents, the swells and the wind, but after much hard work, we can finally discern the sea bottom. … Read more

We are between the islands of Conejeras and Bledas. We would like to take samples here while the weather gets better in the east. Just when we are about to begin to submerge the ROV, the wind suddenly changes and begins to blow from the west, making our shelter useless, so we must leave this … Read more

Although the weather is not favourable, we decided to head toward Formentera in order to get a little closer to the marine mountains we want to document. The wind picks up and we must change our course and take refuge on the west coast of Ibiza. It is a rough night until we are able … Read more

We spent the day at port loading supplies on board and waiting for new crew members who will join us on this last part of the journey. We heard that the people from CRAM had also arrived in Palma with their sailboat, the “Vell Mari,” so we went over to say hello and ended up … Read more

We wake up early to find the impressive cliffs of Cap Blanc in front of us. There are vestiges of a large fossil coral reef here that existed in this area of the Mediterranean during the Miocene. More than 5 million years after, we are here to see how these sea floors have evolved. We … Read more