Ras Mohamed National Park, Nabq and Diving!

Yeah, my job is pretty awesome.

So like I said last time, I'm currently helping out on a Tropical Marine Ecology field course to the Red Sea with the University of Glasgow and so far it's been pretty stunning! The first week was spent largely getting everyone used to snorkeling around the local shallow reefs and learning how to conduct various underwater surveys (transects and point counts and the like) and being shown the different environments that are typical of tropical systems. To really show them what the coral reefs of the Red Sea can be like, we took a trip down to the Ras Mohamed national park at the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula for a couple of days, sleeping in a Bedouin camp and seeing what the place had to offer.

As always, please click on the images to see them full size (and nicer looking!).

Our camp for a couple of days at Ras Mohamed

We're definitely in Egypt.

It turns out it was quite a lot! The waters where we were staying dropped to over 800m within a short distance of the shore, so we were treated to some stunning drop-offs as the reefs disappeared off into the depths, as well as an abundance of fish and coral life. The photo opportunities were stunning and the water was clear enough to make it almost easy to take some really nice shots.

Looking over a shallow reef flat in Ras Mohamed.

Fire corals and amazing underwater visibility in Ras Mohamed.

One of our students snorkeling across the reef

The park was jammed full of fish and corals and the water clarity made photography almost simple!

After two amazing snorkels in the blue, we got to do a (freezing cold) night dive to see the nighttime behaviours of the reef inhabitants which was also awesome! Although it was far too dark for photography, the reef was alive with invertebrates (urchins, brittle stars, basket stars, shrimp and small lobsters) and nocturnal fishes which was really cool to see. Compared to the dominance of the fishes which you see through the day the change was remarkable and was probably one of the highlights of the trip (also I really like inverts!).

A raspberry coral in a seagrass bed.

Upside-down jellyfish!

The following day we heading back north again to the province of Nabq to visit a seagrass bed and a small mangrove to discuss their importance as coastal habitats and nursery areas. Just like when I did the course waaaaay back in the day in Tobago, the mangrove was full of upside-down jellyfish (that's actually their name, they weren't just normal jellyfish gone the wrong way up!) which I think are particularly cool beasties. Essentially, the name comes from their behaviour - they carry photosynthesising bacteria underneath their bell, which they use to create energy from the sunlight by turning themselves upside down and settling on the seabed in shallow waters. If the conditions deteriorate, they can just pick up and find somewhere else. They do still have stinging cells in their tentacles though which made the walk around the mangrove a bit prickly!

White mangrove trees. They have aerial roots which extend out of the (typically anoxic) mud and into the air and which they use to respire.

And after all that we got a day off on Tuesday before the student project work starts, which for most of us meant a day out on a dive boat to dive at a local shallow reef at Gab el-Bint which was ace. I'll just let you enjoy the photographs:

Anthias swimming around a gorgonian (sea fan) 

Anthias in the water column above the reefs

Anthias at warp one.

A coral hind (grouper) above the reef.

Anthias around a pitch-black crinoid (feather star).

 

Oddly, halfway through the dive we came across what appeared to be a small shrub with fish in it!* 

 

My dive buddy swimming behind a gorgonian (sea fan) 

Trumpetfish shoaling together at the end of the dive.

* It's really a dark green hydroid, but it really, really looked like a small tree.

Today we started work on the student's projects which they need to run for the next three days and then report back which means another busy few days for all of us, but should be good fun. My group are looking at aggression in anemonefish so it's an excuse to hang out on the reefs and take more photos for me!

Christmas tree worms on a coral.

A teeny tiny lionfish swimming over the reef.

Finally, it's worth mentioning (although it's pretty obvious) that the Canon G12 is working pretty well! The Canon housing isn't brilliant for very close-up shots because the front of the housing blocks half the light from the flash, but if you're willing to work around this it's excellent for shooting subjects >30cm away and framing them against a background. Alternatively you can just turn the flash off and use ambient light instead. As with all photography, getting good shots is all about knowing the limits of yourself and your kit and if you're willing to work within them it's pretty easy to get some great images, especially when your setting is the Red Sea!

Deep-Sea Science at the Outer Hebrides

So, after spending two years of my life working on the Isle of Lewis looking at fisheries bycatch I’m back in the Hebrides again doing deep-sea research. This time around we’re here for one week of a four week cruise investigating the effects of global climate change and ocean acidification on the cold-water coral Lophelia pertusa (yes, Scotland has its very own coral reefs!). Or at least, that’s what everyone else is studying – my interest in this cruise is to collect video transect data from the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) and use that to look at how fish use the reefs and surrounding areas as habitat.

The James Cook docked in Glasgow

Looking out from the JC bridge deck down the Clyde

Sunset over the Hebrides

So far things have been going pretty well, and it's been crazy busy with collecting samples, hosting a BBC film crew and school group from Benecula and dealing with the constant stream of video files coming out of the ROV! We had a few teething problems with the ROV during the first couple of days of the cruise, but they seem to have been more or less sorted out and we’ve been able to conduct some good long dives for sample collection and filming plenty of video footage for me to go through when we’re all back on land! I can’t put up any of the underwater images as yet since they belong to the cruise, but we should be putting a few up on the official cruise blog some time soon. In the meantime, I can share some of the surface shots of the gear we’re using.

This is our ROV and the most important (and expensive) piece of gear we have. With this we're able to collect precise samples, film everything we see underwater and even conduct experiments on the seabed.

Recovering the box corer. This piece of kit goes down on a winch cable and activates when it hits the bottom forcing the scoops closed and (hopefully) bringing us back up a big box of mud!

We did some maintenance work today as well for one of the long-term monitoring stations out here. This is the team preparing to put everything back.

As far as the wildlife goes, it’s been fairly quiet around the ship so far with relatively few sightings (which is a bit surprising considering that the perfectly calm weather we’ve been having is ideal for whale and dolphin spotting). Still, we have seen a few common dolphins and were visited by a basking shark a couple of evenings ago which was very cool!

Basking shark off Mingulay

I’ve been experimenting with taking some video footage with the 7D too, and I’ve got a few nice clips which I’ll get up online when I get home. Sadly the internet connection out here is far too limited to allow any kind of video upload, but to be honest we’re pretty lucky to get anything at all so I’m not complaining. We’ve also got a new mascot on board which doesn’t seem to want to leave the ship and has been here for about 3 days...

Anyone recognise this pigeon? It's still on board...

Anyway, we’re heading offshore now so the next update will be from the middle of the Rockall Trough (that’s about 200 miles west of Scotland).

The last land we'll see for 3 weeks. Could definitely be worse!