Another successful MAREANO cruise finished

Cruise diary: This newsletter has been written by all the biologists onboard the G.O.Sars at the last biogy and geology cruise in 2014. Each biologist has picked her favourite photo from the work on this cruise, and they have written a story for that picture.  There are many different voices here, this reflects both the diversity we see in the benthic communities – and the diversity among the biologists.

Cruise diary: The Mareano 3 cruise also includes deployment of a new type of underwater glider - a 'SeaExplorer' - to complete a north-south transect of the Barents Sea. Two guests from the LOCEAN laboratory in Paris are on board the G.O. Sars for the deployment: glider engineer Michael Field and PhD student Laurent Oziel. The SeaExplorer was successfully deployed from the rescue boat on 2 September.

Cruise diary: 700 meters is almost as long as twice around a sport-field. It is also the length of one MAREANO video-transect. In some areas all 700 meters will look much the same, but other times we observe large variations along the line. This is the story about a transect with lots of changes.

MAREANO video footage crossing a long, elongated cliff north of Varangerhalvøya has shown the presence of irregular holes in the seabed. Strange white features occur at the bottom of the holes and in two larger depressions.

One unexpected finding as MAREANO completed data collection along the Finnmark coast has been the presence of shell sand at more than three hundred metres water depth, off Nordkapp.

Cruise diary: This week marks the start of the third and last MAREANO cruise in 2014. Onboard R/V G.O. Sars, we find 16 enthusiastic researchers and technicians who are all ready to examine the seafloor of the Finnmark coast and the SE Norwegian part of the Barents Sea.