Two months in Antarctic seas

03.03.2013 (Sunday).

I get up at 05:00. As very often, the operations are a bit behind schedule. So I am starring at the night ocean, half sleeping. Like during the previous days it is not cold. To my big surprise I see lights at sea. Apparently it is a fishing boat. Then the dredge is put at sea. Depth: about 700 m. The cable goes down at 0.6m/s. The ship moves at 0.2 m/s for 7 minutes (i.e. a short time) during the dredging operation. The dredge is hauled up at 0.7 m/s (length of cable: 1300 m). When the dredge is at sea, we prepare the traps for the next operation (cutting the fishes into pieces and putting them in the bait boxes). This time, they do not stink. The dredge comes up with a muddy sample. Catch of medium importance.

We have now enough daylight to see that this will be again a gray foggy day. The Agassiz trawl is deployed in the same zone as the dredge, even a little deeper. It also comes up full of mud. Not many amphipods but big ones: large Eusirus complex giganteus form gray back / crimson legs and a huge Paraceradocus (about 100 mm). Its morphology corresponds to P. gibber but (as the specimens from the previous deep station), it has not the two white longitudial dorsal stripes of the P. gibber collected at depths of less than 500 m. Phenotypical variations related to depth? Or are there two very similar species confused under the name Paraceradocus gibber? We don't know for sure but both of us are enclined to favour the second hypothesis.

At 12:44, the lander with the amphipod traps is put at sea. We should recover it tomorrow at about the same hour. In the afternoon I am updating the blog, which was not done for two weeks. It takes an incredible amount of time to upload very light pictures and even text from here at the end of the world, with a poor satellite connection. And there are always little problems of layout to fix again and again...

(Cédric)