Friday
Since the last blog we have moved to shallower water which means that it takes a much shorter time to take the samples, less time between stations and a more hectic schedule. With the 12 hour shifts I have had little inclination to sit at the computer. Perhaps most spectacular have been the samples from the sponge grounds, some of these are the size of footballs. They are difficult to work with without gloves because of the spicules and worsened by the rather nauseous smell given off by some. Sorting and fixing such a large sample had everyone running around madly.

The Campod live video gear has been working, it is lowered to the sea bed and then hopped along a transect some 700metres long. The footage is stored and the megafauna analysed to create a chart of animal communities. You can see some of this video on the Mareano website http://www.mareano.no/english/. You can also read all about the programme in detail. We did a similar thing for the seas around Wales and published the results in our Biomor Reports but we did not have the video or geophysical data to go with our benthic sampling, wouldn’t it be interesting to have seabed images for all the communities we have found in the Irish Sea?

As far as my research goes we have collected a lot of relevant material. Firstly I have seen common Norwegian Sea species that just enter the British fauna and some that are found in both regions or so we think! I now have material of thyasirid bivalves to compare with those we have from the Atlantic Frontier Environmental Network  (Shetland-Faeroes) programme and can hopefully describe some new species now.

There is one family of bivalves that are always problematic, the Astartidae, and I now have a good series of northern A. sulcata fixed in 100% ethanol and RNA later for a molecular study that might be joint with the Bergen Museum.

I have not got Anna any Macoma for her tellinid study but I do have quite a few Abra longicallus a species we only get on the Porcupine Bank west of Ireland.

Andy has been building up an impressive collection of photographs of living polychaetes, he will post some of these on our “return to home” final blog.

We dock early tomorrow morning in Bodo so it is now a frantic pack, tidy and clean period so I had better go.

Penguins are the archetypal Antarctic animals, but only two species, Emperor and Adélie, are truly Antarctic and found nowhere else. The other Antarctic penguins, such as Chinstrap and Gentoo, also occur on sub-Antarctic islands. Elsewhere in the world there are species of penguins which live in warmer climates and one, the Galapagos Penguin, lives practically on the equator. However, they always live where very cold waters feed up from the south. They are flightless birds, well-adapted for life in the sea where they spend most of their time.

Emperor Penguins are the largest, standing over a metre in height and weighing 22-45 kg. Captain Scott, on his 1901-04 Discovery Expedition, was the first to observe the migration of the Emperor Penguin.

They come ashore in April and then walk up to 100-160 km inland to their breeding areas. After laying her single egg, the female returns to the sea to feed, leaving the male to incubate the egg through the severe Antarctic winter.

For nine weeks he endures temperatures as low as -50°C and winds of up to 200 km/h. During this time he cannot feed and by the time the female returns in spring he has lost 45% of his body weight!

The early Antarctic explorers collected penguins for food but some were also collected as scientific specimens. We have several in the collections here at Amgueddfa Cymru.

Antarctic Penguins

Gentoo Penguin, Waterboat Point, Antarctic Peninsula. Image: T Sharpe

The Gentoo Penguin is another of the small penguins and is the least common of the Antarctic penguins with a world population of about 300,000 pairs. Most of these are found on sub-Antarctic islands such as South Sandwich, South Shetland, South Orkney, Crozet and Heard. However, unlike the Adélie they aren't dependent on the pack-ice and it looks as though their numbers are increasing on the Antarctic Peninsula as it warms up.

Chinstrap penguin in the Museum's collections

Chinstrap Penguin, Half Moon Island, Antarctic Peninsula. Image: T Sharpe

The Chinstrap Penguin is roughly the same size as the Adélie and is easily recognised by the thin strip or strap running under its chin. They are the one of the most numerous of the penguins, it's estimated there are about 7 million breeding pairs in the world! There are some huge colonies on the Antarctic peninsula, the biggest colonies can have as many as 200,000 birds living in them.

One of the Emperor Penguins and the Shackleton King Penguin can be seen in this 1914 Antarctic exhibition held by the Museum in the City Hall, Cardiff.

King penguin, Gold Harbour, South Georgia. Image: T. Sharpe

Letter from Sir Ernest Shackleton to the Director of the Museum.

King Penguin presented to the Museum by Sir Ernest Shackleton. It was collected on the 1907-09 Nimrod Expedition, probably from Macquarie Island.

King Penguins are the second largest penguins, they stand about 90 cm tall and weigh 11-16 kg. They are not found on the Antarctic continent, as they prefer slightly warmer water. They breed on sub-Antarctic islands such as Crozet and Kerguelen islands in the South Indian Ocean; Macquarie Island between New Zealand and Antarctica; and the Falklands and South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean.

Surgeon George Murray Levick (1877-1956) was on Captain Scott's 1910-13 British Antarctic Expedition. Levick studied the Adélie Penguin rookery at Cape Adare on the Ross Sea coast of Antarctica while based there in the summer of 1911-12 with the Expedition's Northern Party. Antarctic Penguins. A study of their social habits was published by Levick in 1914 and was based on his observations of the penguin rookery at Cape Adare.

Emperor Penguins photographed by Frederick Gillies in Queen Mary's Land, Antarctica in 1912. Gillies was a Chief Engineer on the Aurora, a former Newfoundland sealing ship used on Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-14. Gillies was born in Cardiff and served his apprenticeship as an engineer on the steamers of John Shearman and Company and P. Baker and Company of Cardiff.

Emperor Penguins and chicks, Ross Sea, Antarctica. Image: T Sharpe.

Adélie Penguin in the Museum's collections. The Adélie Penguin is the only other truly Antarctic penguin. It is about half the size of the Emperor Penguin and weighs between 4 and 6 kg. Adélie Penguins look as though they are being affected by the climate change happening around the Antarctic Peninsula. Adélies only occur where there is plenty of pack-ice in the sea. As the peninsula has warmed there is now less pack-ice in the height of the summer and the Adélie Penguins appear to be moving further south to stay with the pack-ice.

Peter Howlett and Tom Sharpe.

Dr Graham Oliver and Dr Andy Mackie from the Department of Biodiversity and Systematic Biology have been offered the chance to take part in a research cruise to the Arctic waters of northern Norway. This cruise is part of the Mareano project, which aims to map the bathymetry, sedimentology and biology of the seabed around Norway. Graham and Andy will be looking for deep water bivalves and ploychaete worms to augment their research here.

Graham takes up the story:

Our ship is in port and we are now on board waiting to depart for the research area south of the Lofoten Islands. Once there we will be taking samples from depths between 200 and 2500metres.

We have arrived in late spring but already the days are long with the sun coming up well before 5am, but then we are north of the Arctic Circle. The snow is still lying thickly but the bright weather makes the mountainous backdrop really spectacular.

We sail around midnight and it will take 24 hours to reach our first station when we start our 12-hour shifts. Lets hope we can then show you the ship at work and hopefully some of the marine life in the Norwegian Sea.

In the meantime here is a flavour of Tromsø. The town is a mixture of old and new, all jumbled up and reflecting a boom time in the 1960’s. The wooden houses are typical of the old town and the Polar museum represents a most modern addition. The city is surrounded by rugged scenery of fjords and mountains. Our ship the GOSars is named after an eminent marine biologist and one of the most modern in the Norwegian research fleet.

We spent the last 24 hours doing little while a Force 9 gale stoped all sampling, waves were washing over the trawl deck. At last the beam trawl is out now and sampling at just under 2000m. We have completed one station at 660m.

At every station we take samples with a Van Veen grab, a box core, a beam trawl and an epibenthic sledge. The grab and box core are launched from the hangar which is in the middle of the ship, and the doors open close to the sea level. The sledge and trawl are launched off the trawl deck at the stern of the ship. The pictures show the hangar with doors closed and a remote video camera array in the corner. With the doors open the Van Veen grab is launched by the crew, not the scientists, we have no intention of falling into the Arctic waters.

The first beam trawl from 660m is now up and our first sight of life in the Norwegian Sea is on deck. This sample has many kinds of starfish and brittlestars of stunning colours along with an angler fish.

We have stopped and started since Monday due to bad weather and with waves up to 8.5 metres the ship cannot launch the sampling gear. It has also been snowing!  It is very difficult to show the sea in still photos but views from the bridge give some idea.

The GO Sars is a modern research ship with dynamic positioning; this gives impressive accuracy for sampling and bottom photography as well as returning to an exact position for repeat sampling. We have managed a deep station over 2200m with the beam trawl and the sample has some strange fish along with crustaceans and starfishes of many kinds.

A sledge haul from the same site came up with four purple sea urchins along with three of the bivalves that I had come to collect. Hopefully colleagues in Paris will be able to identify the symbiotic bacteria that live in the gills of the bivalve.

We will now move to shallower water where sampling will be quicker, not the 4 hours it takes to do a trawl in abyssal depths.