Week 3 at the Abyssal Plain
22nd August 2011
In: News and Updates
Well, it's been another long couple of weeks at sea since I last updated, and they're keeping us pretty busy collecting, sorting and preserving various mud samples from the deeps. We have had another 2 trawls since my last post, and although the abyss is not the most diverse place in the world for numbers of fish species, we have had a few more types of fish in the trawls, including one enormous slickhead which was too heavy for our scales, but probably weighed in at around 8kg.
This was one very slimy fish :S
I'm still on night shifts, so there hasn't been much opportunity for taking wildlife photos, though there is still relatively little to see. There have been lots of very distant whale spouts, and a number of fin and sperm whale sightings and there are still the usual shearwaters and fulmars gliding over the waves! For the last 2 days we have had two little castaways on board as well - two little birds that settled in for the night on top of the liferafts and which have been scampering around the back of the boat today. I have no idea what species they are though, so if anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them!
Two unidentified castaways that appeared on the ship yesterday
I also had a play around with some very high ISO photographs the other night as there was a group of shearwaters fishing very close to the boat at around 3am. Since I have no flash with me, and the only light was from the deck, I was quite impressed with the shots. Don't get me wrong- these are not award-winning images and they are VERY noisy! But considering they are black birds and I was shooting in near total darkness mostly with manual focus, I think the 7D has done pretty well all things considered, and the photos are good enough for ID purposes if nothing else.
Shooting black birds in virtually no light is not easy...
On Wednesday, we are heading closer inshore to an area called the Porcupine Seabight and I'm finally going to be back working during the day again! This is a similar area to the last cruise I was on where we saw huge rafts of shearwaters, pods of pilot whales and a lot of sunfish, so I'm hoping that it might be a bit busier there for the wildlife.
There might not have been much wildlife to see as yet, but we have been spoiled by the sunsets!
This was one very slimy fish :S
I'm still on night shifts, so there hasn't been much opportunity for taking wildlife photos, though there is still relatively little to see. There have been lots of very distant whale spouts, and a number of fin and sperm whale sightings and there are still the usual shearwaters and fulmars gliding over the waves! For the last 2 days we have had two little castaways on board as well - two little birds that settled in for the night on top of the liferafts and which have been scampering around the back of the boat today. I have no idea what species they are though, so if anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them!
Two unidentified castaways that appeared on the ship yesterday
I also had a play around with some very high ISO photographs the other night as there was a group of shearwaters fishing very close to the boat at around 3am. Since I have no flash with me, and the only light was from the deck, I was quite impressed with the shots. Don't get me wrong- these are not award-winning images and they are VERY noisy! But considering they are black birds and I was shooting in near total darkness mostly with manual focus, I think the 7D has done pretty well all things considered, and the photos are good enough for ID purposes if nothing else.
Shooting black birds in virtually no light is not easy...
On Wednesday, we are heading closer inshore to an area called the Porcupine Seabight and I'm finally going to be back working during the day again! This is a similar area to the last cruise I was on where we saw huge rafts of shearwaters, pods of pilot whales and a lot of sunfish, so I'm hoping that it might be a bit busier there for the wildlife.
There might not have been much wildlife to see as yet, but we have been spoiled by the sunsets!
Comments
By Rosanna Milligan: Thanks to Rick for IDing the little stowaways as Wheatears. That seems to be what they are (they have the white banded tails as well, though they're not visible in this image). Cheers!