I have just spent four weeks at sea on board the RV Dagon, representing SAERI and FIG as a local observer and scientist. I was able to continue my own PhD work on board, but kept involved with the science deployment and retrievals too, which often meant early starts and late finishes, when the weather allowed!
The RV Dagon crew were from Inkfish, the University of Western Australia and Kelpie Geoscience. Inkfish are a relatively new deep sea research team with goals to be the first to explore some of the deepest seas in the world. This included the Falkland Escarpment (200m to the north-east of the islands, just outside of the zone), leading in to the Argentine Basin. Depths of between 3,000m and 6,000m were explored using scientific equipment including landers, which are aluminium frame structures which house CTDs, eDNA and water collection equipment, with baited cameras traps. I had never seen creatures from deeper than around 2,000m before, so it was a fantastic new experience, with a great team of enthusiastic people. We saw lots of grenadier fish, amphipods and other invertebrates – more to come on this when the trip report is released! I was also lucky to receive a tour of the submarine Bakunawa and saw this deployed three times, armed with cameras to film at depths of 3-5,800m.
I was given a copy of the data collected, to be kept by the FIG-SAERI IMS-GIS database for future records. It is expected that research papers will be published with findings from the trip, where I will have the opportunity the be a co-author. Huge thanks to Dr Jess Kolbusz and the rest of the science team for inviting me and allowing me get involved!
Invertebrate images (c) Alfredo Marchio
