saMANTA

After a little getting used to the ship (aka. seasickness) we gotstarted on our plastic sampling. The very inventive crew built us a niceconstruction that allowed us to deploy the manta trawl on the leewardside of the ship - she went like a beauty! Together with the voyage crewwe decided it was fitting to christen our new baby, and at our nexttrawl we baptised her ‘’Samanta’’.She has been working absolutelyperfectly. Many thanks to the permanent and voyage crew for theirassistance and interest in our project!Our initial results from the manta trawls have been interesting. Asexpected, the amount of plastics found in the Southern Atlantic isrelatively low, but still we did find some microplastics in all trawls.What is interesting is firstly that the amount of plastics gatheredseems to be steadily increasing, although it might be too early to beconfirmed. Secondly we see that the sea life present in our samples isalso gradually changing. Our first few trawls consisted mostly of Salps(translucent marine invertebrates), /Physalia physalis /(PortugueseMan-o’-War) and /Velella velella /(‘by-the-wind sailors’), whereas atrawl later 95% of salps were suddenly replaced by tiny blue arthropods,a crab and a small fish (only 3mm long!) All will be identified as faras possible in due course... It is likely that the change in ocean lifeand amount of plastics sampled seen in these trawls is related to thefact that we have entered a new current. The lack of salps certainlysped up the process of filtering out the plastics! All biological lifein our samples has been and will continue to be photographed andanalysed by Jess, and we hope to be able to keep you up to date to whatwe find. We have also been observing larger plastics on the sea surface,kindly assisted by the voyage crew on their look-out duties. The lastcouple of days we seem to have encountered more pieces of plasticfloating by: so far we have identified a fishing net, some pieces ofStyrofoam, a buoy, a rubber film and some plastic bottles.On the marine biology front, as mentioned, Jess has identified a numberof species brought on board by SaManta, and also organisms that havemade their way into the seawater filter for the ship’s osmosis plant.These include mussels, barnacles and goose barnacles, as well as a fewother bivalves and arthropods. After an introductory talk on ourresearch aims (sparking loads of interest, discussion and enthusiasm),the first science talk was delivered yesterday by Jess, entitled‘Bioluminescence’ which went well and caught the attention of the crew,especially those who have witnessed the phenomenon during the nightwatches illuminating EUROPA’s wake. Dolphins and whales have made abrief appearance and the swells are consistently skimmed by theshearwaters, petrels and various species of albatross. Oceanographyresearch in the form of sea water temperature and meteorologicalobservations have been taking place twice daily and samples of seawatercollected for analysis (focussing on salinity) have been taken. Theresearch continues…So our initial result is: with entering new currents and travellingnorth, we see a very slight increase in the amount of plastics sampledand observed. However expected, it is very interesting to notice thedifference. We expect an increase of plastics found during the voyage,especially when entering the Northern Atlantic Gyre, with a decrease ofplastics in between the North and South Altantic Gyre (around theequator). The diversity of marine life is increasing and the watertemperature is warming… we’re destined for hotter climates!