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Hawke Channel Week 1
Hawke Channel Week 1
This week has been very productive, even with our grey foggy day!
The crew left The Launch in Holyrood July 8th at 1700, and steamed North-West towards Hawke Channel.
Since entering the Hawke Channel MCA on the morning of July 10, we have had 4 full days of sampling and one weather day where the winds and swell allowed us to map areas but not to deploy any other sampling gear.
So far (July 14th), we have sampled 9 sites, each separated by about 14 nautical miles. Within those sites, we have performed 29 different science operations over the side of the Patrick and William, along with the collection of multibeam data and fisheries acoustics data at four frequencies.
The ship is currently working it's way up the North-Eastern Edge of the Marine Refuge and in turn are sampling some of the deepest water in this MCA! Depths here can reach almost 600m!
One of our most frequent sampling methods includes the 'CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) rosette', an integrated sampling device that both records oceanographic data and is programmed to collect 6 bottles of water sampled from specific depths. Importantly, that water from the surface, mid-water, and bottom depths provides the water source for our environmental DNA (or 'eDNA') samples to record the presence of different species throughout the water column.
We also heavily rely on the use of both a Baited Remote Underwater Video camera setup, and a Drop Drift camera setup also known as the "Bouncy" Cam. These two camera sources, along with the eDNA, plankton tows, midwater IKMT trawls, and observer data all tell us what is in our water!
Highlights
Highlights
When asking our team the highlights of their trip so far, these are some of their answers: smooth seas to start the mission; a storm petrel landing in the ship; sponge, soft coral and benthic diversity seen thus far; a great internet connection, an iceberg sighting, and the Cook Jeff's lasagna at lunch time.
July 14th, 2023
Where We Were This Week!
Where We Were This Week!
Here is our path of travel this week, and the stations we have sampled thus far! This map and screenshots below were created by two of the work-term students involved in this project, Kavindu Deraniyagala and Kasun Perera.
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