Plankton blooms, Strange birds and More Macro Photography

Well, we left Rockall trough yesterday and moved to a shallower site further north on Rockall bank to try and escape the storms which are swirling around the south of the UK at the moment, which seems to have been a good move as we’ve managed to get some good, long ROV dives out here so far!

Interestingly, we seem to have arrived right in the middle of a coccolithophore bloom which has turned the water a tropical milky green colour! Coccolithophores are a type of phytoplankton with a calcium carbonate skeleton, and are one of the most obvious blooms to see using satellite imagery because they are such a bright green.

A coccolithophore bloom has turned the water bright green

We’ve also had a few interesting bird visitors lately. I’m not actually sure the bird from the last blog really was an arctic skua, and we were visited by a yet another skua two days ago which I’ve not seen before. I've no idea if they're the same species with different plumage or are completely different, so if anyone can help me out it would be greatly appreciated! We don't have a particularly good ID book out here so getting these right at the moment is more or less guess work.

Another mystery skua passing by the ship

I also spotted this little fulmar amongst the crowd, showing very different colours from normal, but I don’t know if it’s just a young bird or on in winter plumage? I’ve not seen fulmars in different plumage before so any help would be much appreciated!

I've never seen a fulmar with this plumage before. Is this common or something weird?

With the return to ROV dives we’ve also had some more guests for the photography aquarium. To get around the issue of the unbalanced lighting I made a homemade reflector out of tin foil and a random piece of plastic and it seems to be working pretty well so far. See what you think of these:

A little squat lobster on a hydroid. 

The hydroid itself was full of little amphipods (crustaceans similar to sandhoppers)

Eunice norvegicus is a polychaete worm which builds its tubes inside Lophelia reef framework.

A gorgonian (a type of soft coral) commonly seen growing in Lophelia framework

A tiny crinoid or feather star, found clinging on to a little piece of coral.

We're heading off to the Hebridean Seamount tonight which means we're heading back towards the Outer Hebrides and land and starting to meander homewards. We'll be passing Rockall itself this evening at about 9pm, so we'll hopefully get there for sunset (if the clouds lift a little!).

Squishing cups at 800m!

Well, we got one day out of the ROV at least before the weather turned lumpy again and we had to put the work on hold again. It’s unclear what we’re going to do for the last week of the cruise, since the weather forecast and the sea state are both changing so rapidly it’s difficult to know what the best decision will be to get the most out of our last few remaining days.

Between writing my cruise report and working on my thesis, I’ve got plenty to be getting on with, so having a bit of time to really focus on writing and analysis is great for catching up on some things. Of course, being disconnected from constant Facebook access means that we have to come up with slightly more creative ways to get distracted from working, and with deep-sea work going on, that generally means decorating polystyrene cups and sending them down to the seabed to be squished by the pressure. Interestingly, the ones we're sending to 800m are about the same size as the ones we sent to 4800m last year, which makes me wonder what the minimum depth is for maximum squashed-ness... My science-sense is tingling and I can sense an experiment coming on! Anyway, here’s a few I made earlier:

Teeny weeny squished cups

In wildlife news, there hasn’t been much change really. The gannets, fulmars, kittiwakes, gulls and skuas are still following us around, but the gannets still haven’t been diving for us and it’s been too rough for successful whale spotting.

Fulmars run over the surface of  the sea before they take off, leaving little footprints in the water!

I did see my first ever Arctic skua yesterday though as it swooped by the ship! At least, I think it’s an arctic skua.... It’s a pretty terrible photo, but I’m going to share it anyway.

The first Arctic skua I've ever seen (I think!()

200 hungry seabirds & the Jubilee

Well, the weather brightened up yesterday and the swell has decreased pretty nicely so it’s looking like we’ll be back on track with the ROV work from today which is good news! Still it’s been pretty cool out here with the heavy weather and although there hasn’t much going on in terms of wildlife that we could really see (except the pod of 20 pilot whales which I missed! Bah!).

Making celebratory Jubilee hats

The bad weather did give us a chance for some hat-making sessions for the Queen’s Jubilee weekend though!

What are you looking at?

Considering that there are 54 people on board the ship, we throw away relatively little food. Meals are one of the daily highlights so people tend to eat everything they’re given anyway, and the kitchen will recycle any other leftovers into new meals for a few days as well so very little is actually wasted. So it’s pretty incredible that we’re currently being followed by an entourage of about 200-300 gulls, fulmars, gannets and skuas, which are apparently getting enough food to make it worth their while to tag along with us. I’ve no idea how much these birds need to eat, but I would have thought a fishing boat would have made a better target for discards and a free meal than us. Still, it means that feeding time for us is quickly followed by feeding time for the birds which inevitably means a few scuffles between the birds and some good photo opportunities for me!

We're being followed by a LOT of birds

This must be worthy of a caption competition!

Fulmars racing for some scraps

Two gulls scuffling over some leftovers

A (far away) skua intercepting a gannet mid-dive.

 I saw my first shearwater of the trip today too, which is nice since it means they’re definitely out there somewhere! I’m still trying to get a good photograph of one, but they’ve been making themselves scarce this trip which is a bit unusual considering they’re usually a fairly common sight. Still, I’ll keep an eye out for them and hopefully they’ll come back over the next few days before we leave.

Rain? Time to get the macro lens out!

Well, it’s a rainy grey day out here in the middle of the sea, which actually makes a really nice change from the sunshine (yes I’m Scottish, yes I miss rain!), but as much as I enjoy shooting in the rain, with everyone hiding inside on their laptops and the wildlife pretty subdued it seemed a good time to get out the macro lens and try some specimen shots.

 Even the fulmars looked fed up with the weather

In order to get decent quality images of the animals we’re collecting with the ROV and the boxcores, I brought along a little 10L aquarium tank, a big strip of black cotton to surround it with and a couple of sheets of 2mm plexiglass to act as a sort of clear shelf inside the tank to support the animals (thanks to Millie Sharkey at Bristol Uni for her advice on the setup!). We set it up tonight in one of the outdoor labs and immediately entered into a bitter battle against the constant condensation forming on the glass... Once the cold room empties out a bit I’ll need to try and grab a space in there, but I’ll need to wait for the science to get done first.

I’ve only got one flashgun with me, so unless I can find some other sort of torch or waterproof lamp, I’ll be going for the side-lit look!  Anyway, here’s a few first attempts:

  

 An antipatharian (black coral)

 

Close-up of the black coral polyps

The underside and mouth of a pencil urchin

 

Lophelia coral (polyps retracted)

So it’s an all right start I think! Some of these have had a bit of work done to them in Photoshop to remove reflections from the glass and particles from the water, but otherwise they’ve only had the usual contrast and sharpening. If anyone has any handy tips for improving the lighting on these though I'd be really grateful! Chances are we're only going to have the one light source, but we can probably build more or less anything we need.

Wind, waves and wildlife!

Well, the good weather finally left us and we’ve had a grey and windy day today which has come as a bit of a shock to the system after all the sunshine we’ve been treated to the last week! Still, it’s great news for photographing seabirds though, as they seem to prefer a bit of wind for flying in to help them glide over the waves, or sit in the up draughts alongside our six-storey  ship. I must admit, it’s been great to be outside on the back deck shooting seabirds in flight again! I think the last time I was really able to stop and shoot seabirds was probably back in 2010 when I was working on the fishing boats. I’ve had a few trips in the meantime obviously, but I’ve been mostly shooting coastal birds for a while now and it’s brilliant to be back out with the gannets again.

The mystery of why there are so many birds around has been solved as well and it turns out that they’re all here making the most of the food waste that gets dumped from the kitchens. All our other waste is either recycled or incinerated on board to minimise the environmental impact of the ship while it’s working, so it’s only biodegradable waste that is put over the side. Still, it’s good enough for the fulmars and gulls, though it’s a little strange watching them fight over bits of watermelon

A gull making off with a chip. That’s a good traditional Scottish diet!

A group of fulmars congregating around the food waste

The fulmars are here in one of the largest groups I’ve ever seen around a ship and there are probably at least 100 of them following us around. I love how at home seabirds are in the oceans regardless of what the sea state is like and it’s great watching them shrug off breaking waves and strong winds like it’s nothing at all.

A fulmar splashing through a wave

A group of fulmars looking absolutely unfazed regardless of how tilty they get

And this one was so comfortable it tucked up and went to sleep

For a little while we were also joined by a few gannets which circled the ship for about an hour or so, gliding around the ship and floating in the air by the bows.

A gannet flying below the bows of the ship

More entertainingly, for some reason every time the gannets landed on the sea they would target a fulmar and force them to rush out of the way. I’ve no idea why they were doing this since nothing was feeding at this point, but I don’t know an awful lot about birds so if anyone else has any suggestions I’d love to hear them!

The gannets liked to use the fulmars as landing pads for some reason

Wildlife over the Rockall Trough

So it’s another beautiful day at Rockall, where we are currently floating on our research ship about 200 miles to the west of the Outer Hebrides. Surprisingly, this area appears to be a far better site for wildlife watching than Mingulay was, and we are seeing large numbers of gannets, fulmars and kittiwakes around the ship. I’m never sure if they follow ships out here, or if we just happen to come across patches of them, but since these are all scavengers I wouldn’t be surprised if they were attracted in to see us.

A young gannet flying by

A fulmar swimming up for a closer look at the ship

 We’ve also had some surprising visitors to the ship as well, and picked up a large group of about 20-30 barn swallows last night which were as tame as anything and spent the entire evening posing for everyone with a camera! We were a bit concerned that they were only here because they’d been knocked off course, but it seems that some swallows will migrate from Africa to Greenland, so it’s possible we’re on their route. Certainly most of them seem to have disappeared this morning so hopefully they’ll be back on their way north for the summer.

 

Migrating barn swallows en route to the north. They all looked exhausted and were no doubt pleased for the short break.

More surprising than the swallows though was the appearance of a second pigeon (how do you get a pigeon 300 miles offshore?). Both birds are ringed racing pigeons and are (I believe) being fed and watered by the crew since it’s unlikely they’ll be leaving the ship now before we go home. If anyone knows what to do with them, I’ve managed to get partial numbers off their rings which seem to be:

 

Pigeon 1: (Green) SU10 3660L

Pigeon 2: (Blue) N273 

Anyway, if anyone knows how to contact the birds’ owners they might be interested to know their pigeons are currently enjoying a brief holiday.

Minke whale surfacing beside our ship

Finally, not to be outshone by a group of birds, we had our first whale sighting of the trip when a Minke whale surfaced right alongside the boat yesterday afternoon! I’ve seen a few Minke whales over the years, but I’ve never managed to get a single shot of one, so you can imagine I’m a bit pleased with how these came out!

Anyway, better get back to work watching the ROV dives. Catch you soon!