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!()

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!