25 July - Friday

Since my last installment, we steamed away from the Isles of Scilly back to the Jones Bank to resume recovery of moorings. It all went incredibly well, and we even managed to retrieve the ADCP we thought was stuck in the mud. Lots of relieved physicists on board, who could turn their energy to boxing up equipment ready for our return to Falmouth on Sunday.

Not so the seabirders. We had got hold of some mackerel left over from Inigo's experiments and proceeded to chop it up, mixed with cooking oil and cornflakes. If we were going to go over the continental shelf edge, we wanted to give ourselves a fighting chance at seeing some good birds.

Dawn of 25th - approaching Little Sole Bank

I'm somewhat surprised to find that in spite of all the good words said in the bar last night, I'm the only person up in time for dawn. Eventually a few bed-heads stagger to the observation boxes once it has got light. We arrive at the first CTD station just before breakfast, but we've seen a group of common dolphins approach the ship. Reasonable omen.

At the station, we start to throw small quantities of mackerel and our "chum" mixture over the side, and gradually the nearby gannets and fulmars cotton on to what's happening. Then the local storm-petrels start to patter and dip on the slick of mackerel bits spreading from the rear of the boat. We scour the flock looking for an unusual petrel, when a Cory's shearwater flaps lazily past, interested by the smell, but not really that interested. A reasonable attempt at luring something rare to the boat, but not quite the full cigar.

Stormies LOVE our chum

We steam to the next station for a few hours. The main interest on passage is a sooty shearwater near the point where the continental shelf edge starts to drop away. The physicists are getting excited, because sand-bank ripples are setting off tidal circulation and mixing of the water column. We're getting excited because we see a notable increase in storm-petrel numbers. It's all getting very busy and we stop at the perfect spot. Over goes the chum and mackerel bits, and we've soon accumulated a flock of twenty or so stormies behind the ship, some coming incredibly close. We're so busy chucking chum over the side, we forget to keep checking the flock. Mark remembers and plonks his binoculars straight onto a Wilson's storm-petrel. Woohoo!!

It doesn't seem to fly particularly differently from the other stormies or use the characteristic "hanging" feeding method or butterfly flights. However, it is noticeably larger than the stormies, with broader wings, a distinct paler carpal bar, and a forked wing tip on both sides where it is moulting its flight feathers. The legs are very long and project well beyond the tail, and the white of the rump wraps a long way round toward the vent and a little up the flanks. It also lacks the white stripe on the under-wing. A wee cracker and well worth the wait.

Andy, Adam and Mark celebrate the Wilson's storm-petrel

Once the CTDs and the plankton samples have been taken, we continue over the shelf edge and into deep water. I notice that the water is starting to come over the top of my wellies, so it must be deep here. Three sooty shearwaters drift past, and we see plenty more stormies. A few groups of dolphins put in a brief show, but we never get good enough views to see what species they are. Then John Beaton, who is sunning himself on the observation deck shouts "thar she blows". He's seen a whale blowing in the far distance. We alert the other scientists and wait until we get closer. Eventually we see the classic sequence - a tall blow, brief wait, long rounded back, then see a fairly tall pronounced sickle dorsal fin, dark grey back. FIN WHALE. Woohoo. But it doesn't stop there. We see another eleven before we reach the final CTD station.

We put out the remainder of the chum at a spot where the sea is 1500m deep. And we manage to attract absolutely nothing. Zilch. Nada. Rien. Sweet Fanny Adams. Oh well. But a small group of dolphins show a bit of interest in the ship, and we continue to see fin whales keeping their distance as they pass us.

Common dolphin by the ship

There were a couple of other rituals to complete. Firstly, we attached one of the alarm watches to the CTD before it goes down to the depths of 1500 metres to see if it still goes beep beep beep (see earlier postings). And lots of the scientists scribble onto polystyrene cups and attach these to the CTD.

Two things happen - the cups shrink to about one quarter of their original size, and that watch still goes beep beep f***ing beep.

But what a fantastic day, and wonderful reward for the long, dreary hours we spent on the Jones Bank

See what happens to you when you go to deep water - your head gets bigger!

We finished the evening watching the sun go down, the distant blows of fin whales and five Cory's shearwaters that came to take a look at us. As the sun set we all saw a bit of a green flash. Woohoo!