Blog

Anna Belcher (BAS)

A successful evening: 5 Pelagras (NOC’s drifting sediment traps) recovered and one fish life saved! As the third Pelagra was being lifted onto the ship, something seemed a little strange…one of the collection funnels was still filled with water…hmmm…wait, what’s that? A fish tail! The team gathered around, and sure enough there was a…

You might think that COMICS is a strange name for a science programme (we should always take science seriously, right?) but it stands for something very important to us and our planet: Controls over Ocean Mesopelagic Interior Carbon Storage.  

The ocean stores large amounts of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the atmosphere, helping to regulate Earth’s…

It’s 3 am, the phone rings and the day begins. You force yourself into a not-quite-dry immersion suit and boots, get out on deck and grimace as the polar wind blows its choice of rain, hail or snow in your face.

After taking receipt of the precious cargo of samples that the nets and water bottles deliver, it’s straight to the temperature controlled laboratory at 1 degree…

I always enjoy calibrating the acoustic instruments on our research vessels around South Georgia. It usually means taking the ship into a sheltered harbour called Stromness Bay. As you enter the bay you enjoy stunning views of three now uninhabited whaling stations (Leith, Stromness and Husvik), fur seals and penguins huffing and puffing on the beaches, and entertain some small…

You can never have too many nets, so we’ve gone for 4 net systems with a total of 22 nets! The plan being to try and find out what small marine animals are living in the mesopelagic and if they are migrating up and down the water column. So far, we’ve had all of our nets in the water, catching everything from tiny copepods to small lanternfish. Each net system has multiple…

Going to sea as part of the COMICS program, especially to the South Atlantic/Southern Ocean, for the first time within the first month of my PhD was an exciting opportunity (with a little apprehension also!). 

My friends and family researched what the weather would be like and came back informing me that the waves would be huge and it would be freezing cold, they were…