As part of the study, two Cornish fishing boats have been hired to catch fish in the area, so that we can confirm the identity of fish shoals we have seen on the echosounders. Modern echosounders are pretty sophisticated and can be used to identify the number of fish under the ship, and hint at what species they might be. to be certain of the fish species, it is important to try and catch samples from different parts of the study area. There have been a number of French fishing boats in the area, and we had to ask them to avoid the area where all of our moorings are set, for the safety of our kit, and also for the safety of their fishing gear.
One of the fishing boats failed to make it out here - they had engine trouble and had to limp back to port. The other made it out here this morning and duly started fishing in the areas we needed information from. Eventually, the French boats were clearly getting a bit miffed that this Cornish boat was allowed to fish on "their patch" and started using aggressive tactics to try and shift him, such as cutting across his bows. Eventually, one of the boats managed to catch one of the moorings in his net, and dragged part of it to the surface. You could hear the blue language from the physicists throughout the ship at the thought of all their expensive gear eventually being damaged.
We steamed over to there to warn off the aggressive boat, and attempted to recover the mooring. It was an ADCP device. There, so now you know. OK it stands for Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (thanks Clare) and measures water turbulence from the sea bed in the water above it. Because the French boat had cut a rope down to the mooring, they had to deploy an emergency recovery procedure. You send an acoustic signal to the device to uncouple it from weights that hold it down, and in theory, it rises to the surface. After an anxious wait, this indeed worked, and the crew were able to recover the ADCP onto the ship.
Still bristling from the unsavoury incident, we continued on our way to the next point for stationary counts. Then an urgent message came in from the fishing boat we had chartered. One of the crew had got his hand caught and lost the tops of his fingers. Ouch. Within half an hour, a helicopter arrived on the scene from Culdrose, winched someone down on the trawler, winched the poor guy onto the helicopter and off to hospital. Wow, that was efficient. Apparently the incident wasn't too serious, and the Maritime Coastguard Agency didn't want the boat to come back to port for an investigation. The price of fish is higher for some than others.
We were all feeling a bit shitty, but something started to go right. As we turned away from the fishing boat, we suddenly realised we were surrounded by common dolphins, and some of them came to the side of the boat to play. Dolphins have an unerring ability to lift the spirits, and today was no exception.A common dolphin
Fulmar, aka TNB
It has been mirror-calm today, and we have been able to spot birds some considerable distance away. Apart from the usual gannets, we have seen lots of fulmars, a lot of storm-petrels - still no Wilson's petrel for me and a few other nice seabirds. We saw something I have never seen before, a couple of breaching sunfish. Yes, jumping clean out of the water. According to Wikipedia, they can jump over ten feet high. A racing pigeon landed on the ship - its feet were covered in oil - and tried to befriend Mark. Well he needs a few friends.Over tea, I learned of the third thing that had gone wrong. The ADCP suffered a serious formatting error on the data card - all the current data it had been logging was lost. Corrupted. Completely B******ed.
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