Research update

Pushing onward from the Canary Islands, the trade winds picked up makingtrawling ever more complicated with the increasing speed of the ship.With distance to land, the abundance of plankton quickly declined, asboth nutrient levels and the continental shelf dropped after leaving theSpanish coast. Now, with the open water facing us, jellyfish (Scyphozoa)and sailors-by-the-wind increase in numbers, whilst other groups such asarrow worms and various invertebrate larvae become ever more scarce.Even though planktonic crustaceans such as shrimp still come up in everytrawl, their numbers too are dwindling massively. Being on the third legsince starting research onboard the bark EUROPA, it will be interestingto see what changes we observe once leaving our next destination of CapoVerde, to head out across the Atlantic Ocean.