Kattegat

I woke up happy knowing that I should experience Kattegat on the depth of 100 m via the ROV. In the dark container on deck, where we steer the ROV, we have different screens, from with we can follow the shootings of the ROV. Today, the work with the ROV was thrilling because there was … Read more

Giants of the Deep

It´s widely known that whales are among the largest animals on earth. But what other giants lie beneath the surface of the seas? Unlike giant animals roaming on land such as elephants and hippos, it´s trickier to explore the vast and immense oceans – and so much remains undiscovered. Nevertheless, scientists have encountered a few … Read more

Torwards Kattegat

We are now leaving Copenhagen, where we changed crew. Christina Abel has been onboard in al 3 weeks of this expedition, so it has been a wild start on her time in Oceana. We are sailing towards Kattegat as the sun shines in the waves, and it is hard to believe the weather forecast. But … Read more

Deepwater Horizon´s one-year anniversary: Not much to celebrate

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico turned one year old last week – but this was a birthday that no one celebrated. In addition to human lives, the spill has devastated ocean life: thousands of dead seabirds, stranded turtles, dead oyster beds, mysteriously disappearing dolphins, and plummeting crab catches have been … Read more

Moving South

During the last couple of days we have been moving south. As we are moving south the salinity changes and the biodiversity increases. We took samples from the seafloor and did video recordings, including ROV and divers, in different spots near Öland in Sweden.  We saw river netrite (Theodoxus fluviatilis), hydroids (Laomedea loveni), red seaweed … Read more

Easter

The Swedish side of Gulf of Bothnia appeared as its best to us; Easter Sunday was such warm and sunny day that working on a deck almost did not felt like work at all. We did ROV, grab and dive near Öregrund. In addition CTD was used to record the hydrography of the area. Visibility … Read more

An unsolved mistery

We started the day by doing a ROV video and taking a soil sample with the Van Veen dredge in a Marine Protected Area, which cover a beautiful archipelago at the Swedish coast to the Bothnian Sea. The weather was beautiful; sunny and calm. The ROV resolved a fine environment on 100 meters depth, with … Read more

Time goes by, so slowly…

I get out of bed, and the sun is almost an inch above the horizon. Not that we´re late risers… here it´s early dawn, just after five and already daytime. Night falls at nine, giving us more than 16 hours of light each day. And with good reason, since my day is fully occupied. Today, … Read more

Cualerpa salad and Lionfish ceviche, anyone?

Normally, a thick meadow of lush algae is what you´d expect to see in healthy, thriving ocean ecosystems, right? Actually, it depends on the species. It´s certainly not a good sign if that green carpet turns out to be Cualerpa taxifolia, one of the deadliest invaders of the Mediterranean. Known as ´killer algae´, Cualerpa was … Read more

Stockholm archipelago

The weather has been excellent during the last days, which made it possible to do several dives and ROV video operations in the outer Stockholm archipelago. The variations in the depths in the archipelago gave a great opportunity to film the benthic organisms at different depths from 100 meters to 8 meters. We saw flatfishes, … Read more