Settling In

The problem with sleeping for 12 hours when you work 12 hours shifts, is that as soon as you wake up you have to go right back to work. Fortunately the Irishman (well actually he's English, working in Ireland) has recovered his sea legs, so the duty time is being equally shared.  In fact, the seas have calmed nicely and we've changed tack so that we are going with the wind and not across it, so the ship has settled in to a nice gentle sway.  Things we take for granted on dry land, like walking straight and showering without falling over, are now more possible.

We had another trawl while I was sleeping, this time at 350m depth (the first one I oversaw was at the surface, around 10m).  This yielded only slightly more seafood.  A blue whiting (relatively rare these days: five years ago they caught around 1.2 million tons of blue whiting, this year, following a drastic collapse, the quota is for just over 40 thousand tons), some more baby squid and a few other assorted fish:

The Last Of The Blue Whiting, and Assorted Seafood

At least this gave the fish lab people something to do.  These guys have been doing even less than me.  On the left is Bram, cruise leader and a colleague from IMARES, and swimming partner/coach back on dry land.  The guy in the snappy orange trousers is a German, Matthias.  The ship's captain, who I chat with at regular times through the day but who's name I have forgotten, is in the middle, and the guy shifting fish from the squid is Franck, a Danish biologist.

Sorting The Catch

My second shift went pretty smoothly.  Still no sign of fish.  I called for another surface trawl around 1:30 (the 'darkest' time of the day) but went to bed before they pulled it in, confident that I wouldn't be missing anything.  Apparently they caught a couple tapeworm-ridden redfish.  A little strange, because redfish are usually a deep water species and don't eat a lot of tapeworm infested pork or beef.

Besides the half bucketfuls of assorted marine species there has also been a sighting of a fin whale, which I slept through, and various seabirds are following us around.  There are lots of kittiwakes and fulmars, effortlessly gliding along with the ship.  I even spotted an oystercatcher this morning.  Not the same as the South African one, more white on the body, but a solid black head and the same bright orange beak.  I'm not sure what the hell he is doing out here, miles from land, but he certainly isn't going to catch any oysters.  From my personal experience his chances of catching any fish are limited too.  Hopefully he likes small squid.

A Fulmar