MAREANO's spring-cruise

So far, the deepest and time-consuming locations within Nordland VI has been surveyed. The first part of the cruise started in Tromsø 27 April and will end up in Bodø 22 May, covering solely the Nordland VI area. The second part of the cruise will take place off mid-Norway, ending in Tromsø 22 May. 

The first part of the cruise covers the Nordland VI area, while later the area between Kristiansund and Halten is to be surveyed.

Unfortuneately we so far have lost two valuable days due to bad weather. When the waves grow too high, our sampling equipment do not function very well, and the work may be difficult to carry out on board.

Museum-guests

Three guest scientists from the National Museum of Wales and the Museum of Bergen partake in this MAREANO cruise. Andy Mackie and Graham Oliver, the National Museum of Wales, are both experts on, respectively, polycheates and bivalves, while Katrine Kongshavn takes care of the zoological MAREANO collection at the Museum of Bergen. MAREANO has a close co-operation towards the Museum of Bergen, where the MAREANO-material is professionally treated and stored after finishing the MAREANO-preparations inclusive of identification of species and biomass-measurements. 

Scientists and technicians study a bottom sample.

Bottom samples

The main focus of this cruise is to take samples from the seabed by a grab, corers, beam trawl and epi-benthic sled since the previous expeditions largely carried out video filming of the seabed. This cruise also include a few samples using a so-called "gravity corer", which is a several meter long tube that is released with great force into the bottom ("gravitation driven"). The purpose is to calibrate the age analyses undertaken on samples collected from the short core that MAREANO ordinary relative to age analysis and measurements of any accumulation of pollutants deposited the last 100 years.

 
"Gravity corer" being launced from "R/V G.O. Sars" in order to collect samples from the bottom sediments.

Now we have collected samples from 16 localities, mainly at the continental slope and to depths of 2600 meters. The work will go faster the last part of the cruise as we will concentrate on shelf-locations at depths between 200 and 500 meters.