Baltic Expedition (2011): Expedition Diaries
Kattegat
Author: Iben Rathje
Date: April 30, 2011
I woke up happy knowing that I should experience Kattegat on the depth of 100 m via the ROV. In the dark container on deck, where we steer the ROV, we have different screens, from with we can follow the shootings of the ROV. Today, the work with the ROV was thrilling because there was a lot of current in the water. This means that the ship is drifting and sometimes suddenly makes a big jerk in the ROV, and then all the fish are gone.
Read More...Torwards Kattegat
Author: Iben Rathje
Date: April 29, 2011
We are now leaving Copenhagen, where we changed crew. Christina Abel has been onboard in al 3 weeks of this expedition, so it has been a wild start on her time in Oceana. We are sailing towards Kattegat as the sun shines in the waves, and it is hard to believe the weather forecast. But we will be cheated by the weather in the coming days, and Kattegat is the best spot. So we will investigate the Boblerev and the deep areas.
Read More...Moving South
Author: Hanna Paulomaki, Christina Abel
Date: April 26, 2011
During the last couple of days we have been moving south. As we are moving south the salinity changes and the biodiversity increases.
Read More...Easter
Author: Hanna Paulomaki, Christina Abel
Date: April 25, 2011
The Swedish side of Gulf of Bothnia appeared as its best to us; Easter Sunday was such warm and sunny day that working on a deck almost did not felt like work at all. We did ROV, grab and dive near Öregrund. In addition CTD was used to record the hydrography of the area. Visibility was not particularly good as expected, but we recorded many interesting species and features of the Baltic.
Read More...An unsolved mistery
Author: Hanna Paulomaki, Christina Abel
Date: April 23, 2011
We started the day by doing a ROV video and taking a soil sample with the Van Veen dredge in a Marine Protected Area, which cover a beautiful archipelago at the Swedish coast to the Bothnian Sea. The weather was beautiful; sunny and calm. The ROV resolved a fine environment on 100 meters depth, with good visibility and we saw many scorpion fishes. As always when carrying out fieldwork, we experienced an unpredictable incident, a minor episode with the soil sample, which delayed us a little.
Read More...Time goes by, so slowly...
Author: Carlos Minguell
Date: April 22, 2011
I get out of bed, and the sun is almost an inch above the horizon. Not that we´re late risers... here it´s early dawn, just after five and already daytime. Night falls at nine, giving us more than 16 hours of light each day. And with good reason, since my day is fully occupied.
Read More...Stockholm archipelago
Author: Hanna Paulomaki, Christina Abel
Date: April 18, 2011
The weather has been excellent during the last days, which made it possible to do several dives and ROV video operations in the outer Stockholm archipelago. The variations in the depths in the archipelago gave a great opportunity to film the benthic organisms at different depths from 100 meters to 8 meters. We saw flatfishes, butterfishes, scorpion fishes and lots of mussels secured to stones. The male scorpion fish were protecting the fertilized white eggs and we also filmed the jellyfish dancing gracefully in the water at 90 meters depth.
Read More...Dive
Author: Gorka Leclercq
Date: April 14, 2011
Today they sound the reveille at half past six; I go up on deck to see what the weather is like, because we will be diving at 8.00 A.M.
I decide to go back inside the boat to have breakfast, because with the fog outside and the temperature only being two degrees, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
After “stuffing our faces” at breakfast, using the dive as an excuse, we equip ourselves with the thermal clothing, two pairs of socks, the drysuit underwear and the drysuit (we bear more resemblance to the “Michelin Man” than divers).
Read More...Sailing in the northern direction
Author: Hanna Paulomaki, Christina Abel
Date: April 13, 2011
During the night we had been sailing in the northern direction, and this could indeed be felt when entering the deck in the morning. It was freezing compared to the earlier days in the Baltic Sea expedition. And this is only the beginning, since we are getting closer to the fast ice in the Finish waters.
Read More...Just two degrees!!!
Author: Hanna Paulomaki, Christina Abel
Date: April 12, 2011
We left Copenhagen in the evening of the 11th April and sailed towards the Baltic Proper. It was time to do the first scuba diving on this expedition, and the weather was just perfect for this. Four divers dived at a ridge in Kalmarsund – which separates the mainland of Sweden and Öland. The 2 degree cold water was not an obstacle for our divers, and the marine habitat was filmed and photographed intensively. Although the diversity of species is low in this area, we got interesting photos of horse mussels, scorpion fish and crustaceans, including isopods and shrimps.
Read More...
