Here she goes again.........
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Hi, gang!
After a week at sea (which you can read about on the blog), with some delays due to rough weather, we are finally getting near where we want to be. And last night the weather gods were so kind as to calm the raging seas long enough for me to drop a net in, at long last! Because there was still a little wind and swell, we gave it a go with a net designed to catch debris rather than animals - the mesh is coarser (about 1.5 mm) and a bit rougher, and a it's a sturdier construction in general - didn't want to risk blowing out the good net and losing the catcher-bucket on the first go! So we did two 10-minute tows, and pulled in a few krill, some brilliant blue copepods, a few startling deep-water fish (up to about 4 cm), a bluebottle jelly, a couple of isopods, some polychaetes and a few mangled salps, but no squid. There were a few mangled gelatinous masses in the folds of the net, but the abrasive mesh made them pretty well unidentifiable. This morning, though I got up to try again at dawn, this time with the magic fine-mesh ring net. Just as the sky was beginning to lighten in the east, we put it over the side, crossed our fingers, pulled it in, and... bingo! There, swimming around at the top of the sample (put into an acrylic cylinder for easier viewing) was a beautiful, tiny, perfect cranchiid squid! Its mantle is about 10 mm long, its eyes are out on stalks, and even now (that it has sadly perished), it is almost entirely transparent except for the digestive gland and eyes. When it calms down a bit (the weather was too good to last) I'll put it under the scope and do some sucker- and photophore-counting, and see whether I can give it a more definitive name. In the meantime, hopefully conditions will allow a few more tows at dusk this evening (that's one benefit of it getting dark by 5.30).
I'll keep you posted! I hope to have some pictures soon to send through to Steve, so he can post those as well. Also, if he tells you I'm green around the gills, it's all lies - I would like to state for the record that I have not yarfed ONCE, and that's more than I can say for some of the other crew. Who's a salty dog NOW, aharr?!
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There's more about to happen, but I'll post no details. Can't afford to give anything away online ... you know ... just in case there are spies out there.