23 July - Wednesday

Today was a bit of an odd day. Both Mark and I were feeling under the weather. Although we were both in the bar last night, it wasn't anything to do with the 25 cans of beer we had each. Actually (serioushly), I think I had a migraine, which is very unusual for me.

The crew of the ship and the physicists have been recovering moorings and other kit from the seabed all morning. They're having mixed success, and we've been called up to the bridge on a couple of occasions to help search for frames that might have surfaced. One of the key ADCPs appears to be stuck in the mud on the seabed.

The Crystal Sea under tow

At lunch I see Beth, who is trying to collect fisheries data on this cruise, looking like thunder. The trawler that had to have a crew member winched off, had been doing very well, but they have just run over a stray rope in the sea and got it wrapped around their propeller. They're trying to free it, but not very hopeful. Later, they radio the ship to report that the rope is firmly around the propeller. The coastguard is completely swamped with a mayday call for a missing yacht, can we tow them into the Scillies please. We don't have much choice, and have to break off from the mooring recovery to attend to the striken trawler. We throw a rope to the Crystal Sea and start to tow them back to the Isles of Scilly, ETA some time in the morning. The three birders and Clare, the cetacean-listener look glum at the prospect of missing out on our jolly to the shelf edge.

While waiting to get the ropes sorted I see and photograph an odd looking gannet (see left). Look at the dark line extending down its throat, and the dark feathering around the eyes. And here's a photo of a similar aged northern gannet (right) for comparison. What chance of this being a Cape gannet I wonder? I'm not certain, but I think I saw this bird fly up from the water and show a few white secondaries, which would rule out a Cape gannet if true. Please feel free to express opinions on the identity of this bird in the comments.

I'd just finished photographing this bird when Deborah passed and asked if I had seen anything interesting. I was about to explain "probably not", when out of the corner of my eye, I saw something else. Yippeee, a great shearwater. I got the others, and eventually, we were treated to a superb fly-by after it refused to give up any meals to two bonxies (I once saw a bonxie chase a great shearwater for 40 minutes near the Hebrides once, and still not get a meal out of the shearwater. Apparently they're past masters at not giving in to the bonxie bully-boys). We have a go at chumming to see if we can get the odd gannet back, but with no luck. We later here that the shelf-edge trip is still on. Yippee.

In the evening, the Aberdeen team slaughtered the POL and SAMS teams at Trivial Pursuit, even though they had several hundred people each in their teams to our six.