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| Couldn't get a closer selfie as the Cefas Endeavour wouldn't fit in! |
The team has completed the survey
of North East of Farnes Deep MCZ, and collected a full dataset that will help
us assess how the features of the site change over time. Being on the night shift
team, it was quite daunting to get used to a working pattern of 00:00-12:00,
and really weird to say “Good Morning!” to the team at 23:30, and “Sleep well!”
at 13:00! But after a couple of days (and mountains of coffee) we’ve got into
the swing of things.
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| Hamon grab before deployment |
The survey at North East of Farnes Deep MCZ was focused on
gathering evidence of the broadscale habitats of the area and the infaunal
communities by using sediment grabs with a Hamon Grab.
Although it
sounds strange, I have found sieving mud, gravel and sand is a fantastic method
to see the complexity and variety of life on the seabed here, and we were lucky enough to land
several of the species of conservation interest, Arctica islandica, or ocean quahog, for which the site is designated to conserve.
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| James sieving the sediment samples |
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| Plenty of variety in the sieved sediment samples! |
After effectively sampling North
East of Farnes Deep MCZ, Cefas Endeavour steamed
south west to Farnes East MCZ, which we have been sampling for a few days now. The
survey at Farnes East MCZ is designed to build up a robust dataset and evidence on
order to inform management and further monitoring efforts of the site, and
includes camera sled operations as well as Hamon grabbing.
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| Camera sledge in the moonlight |
The camera
sled has given a fantastic view of the seabed, and we have seen plenty of
evidence of the burrowing megafauna that the site is designated for, as well as
many hagfish, crabs, sea stars, tube worms, anemones and bryozoans. Although
unfortunately today camera operations have been suspended. Gathering
information has not ceased though, and grabbing of the site to develop sentinel
stations, in order to allow of change over long-term scales to be assessed effectively,
has gone underway! In certain areas (and today especially) sediment grabbing
can be hit and miss, and it often feels as if we are fishing for cobblestones,
rather than infaunal species! However, we’ve been lucky in grabbing fish, octopus and hagfish, which got everyone
excited!
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| The fish we found in one of our grab samples |
Tomorrow (or 00:00 tonight,
actually) we continue to survey Farnes East MCZ, taking grabs at the sentinel
stations which represent each of the broadscale habitats within the site and
hopefully continue with camera sledding deployments! But right now, I’m going
to get some rest!
Written by Chris McCabe
