No. 27 - 34,867 Fish
We finished the last trawl station just before sunset and just in
time. Our era of good weather has come to an end but we're finished.
We've set the trawl 74 times (and only once did it not come back), the
nets have brought up 34,867 fish representing 45 species and weighing
24,000 pounds. The litany of measurements and the size of the
database compiled from these specimens are impressive. We've also got
a continuous record of oceanographic and meteorological conditions and
gigabytes of video, photographic and acoustic imagery -- this I hope
to get even more of before we have to leave the area.
How much depends on how long it takes for the low to pass by us. The
wind cranked up knot by knot all afternoon and threatened the last
station. If we hadn't 73 already under our belt we wouldn't have
tried it, or if we had, it would've likely turned into a mess. But we
slipped it in and out before the gods realized that we were teasing
them and headed for cover. Tonight we'll work our way to the south
side of the islands, into the broad Bransfield Strait separating the
South Shetland archipelago from the Antarctic Peninsula. We'll wash
the net out tomorrow in the lee of King George Island and then head
into Admiralty Bay (a place you may remember me writing about early in
the field season) and wait out the storm. We'll do this with the
wisdom of a month at sea and not the impatient enthusiasm of the first
week.
-Roger