ROVs

I'm back from my eight-day off-shore research vessel cruise. We essentially got zero data, which is not only disappointing, it is downright embarassing. We slunked back to Jersey with our tails between our legs.

research vessel cruise in pictures part I

The research proposal, as far as I understood it, was to examine the effects of commercial mobile gear on tilefish (an ocean-bottom dwelling fish species) habitats. ( Beware, image intensive... )

research vessel cruise in pictures part II

We spend the fifth day beam trawling, which is basically dropping this net off the back of the boat down to the ocean bottom, and collecting whatever gets caught in it. We only do it for 10 to 15-minute periods, so that whatever does get caught, we can identify and measure, and throw them back into the ocean, mostly alive (commercial guys trawl for an hour, so whatever lifeform is in the net is mostly dead by the time it arrives on deck).


( more photos... )