News 2010 

During a 500 km long transit from Troms III to Nordland VI the MAREANO project has acquired new data from the upper sediment units. We applied Topas, a kind of strong echosounder sending signals at regular intervals into the seafloor.

MAREANO has completed the mapping at Troms III outside of Arnøya, located in Lopphavet in Troms, and is now steaming southwards to Nordland VI, at the southern tip of Lofoten.

In the afternoon, the 17. September, the scientific vessel G.O. Sars headed north from Tromsø. The ocean was calm, the wind was warm and the sunset colored the sky. The MAREANO autumn survey had started. We reached our destination north west of the island “Sørøya”, about 71° north, by midnight.

This summer’s MAREANO cruise with research vessel “G.O. Sars” ends today in Tromsø, with no time lost due to bad weather or equipment problems we have been very lucky, and have completed all the planned work, and a few extras. The Troms III area offshore north Troms (north Norway) has been the focus of the second leg of the cruise, continuing the good work begun in the first leg. Following video surveys over several previously undocumented coral reefs during the first leg, right at the end of the second leg we were lucky enough to encounter yet another reef, around 20 km north of Vannøya.

A quick note from all on board the Norwegian research vessel ‘G.O. Sars’. We are making good progress with the first of two MAREANO cruises to be undertaken this year, and are now mid-way through the second and final leg of this research cruise.

Mapping the distribution of seabed nature types is an important component of MAREANO. Nature types follow, and contribute to the development of the Norwegian Nature Types classification scheme at the nature-system level.

During the summer cruise of 2010, MAREANO completed mapping of a 150 km long and 16 km wide transect on the Nordkappbanken. During three days, R/V "G.O. Sars" made video recordings of the seabed at a total of 18 stations, and the sea bed was sampled with different types of equipment at four stations. Water depth in the mapped area ranges from 230 m to 315 m.