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!).

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.

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!