Southampton

Filtering for elemental composition (C:N:P)

Unfortunately no repeat of the wildlife spectacular during this morning’s CTD station. We are now headed northeast towards the western tip of Brittany in France.

Where Atlantic salmon feed in the ocean has been a long-standing mystery, but new research led by the University of Southampton shows that marine location can be recovered from the chemistry of fish scales. Surprisingly, salmon from different British rivers migrate to feed in separate places, and may respond differently to environmental change.

The CTD has been recovered from its journey to the deeps, and is now working again. We are all of us relieved to be able to get back to our normal pattern of work.

Most work has not been possible today, due to a problem with the cable that the CTD is lowered on. Thanks to some hard graft from the ship’s engineers, it looks to be repaired now and we hope to be back at work tomorrow morning early.

A decision that ensures the future provision of remotely operated vehicle (ROV) capability for the UK marine science community has been taken by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), working with its partners.

This ends a period of uncertainty following a shipboard incident in late January that resulted in severe damage to the Isis ROV.

The last few days have seen fairly high winds and big waves (see photos). Some stops for water sampling have had to be cancelled because it has been too dangerous to lower the CTD into the water.

Almost two weeks are gone

The first time I went on board the RRS Discovery I was disorientated and a bit worried about the life on board a ship. Some people were working to take on all the research equipment, there were boxes everywhere and the ship seemed to be a labyrinth!

Today our routine of collecting scientific samples has been interrupted by the arrival of the predicted rough weather. We are now heading out towards the deep Atlantic, roughly at the location shown by the red dot on the cruise map.

Coccolithophore blooms, almost

Today’s blog entry is written by Jeremy Young, University College London, who uses both a normal light microscope and an electron microscope to work out the biodiversity of the phytoplankton at each location and through the bioassays.