Friday 27 March 2009

More photos

Dawn
Trawl catches - from between 1000 and 700m deep. Animals in this region get their energy from material falling from the surface layers where there is a enough light for plant growth (top 20-100m).

Kerguelen Petrel - not seen last trip but common in the area in autumn after dispersing from breeding grounds.

Chinstrap Penguins - this species seems to be attracted into the ship. There are also King and Macaroni Penguins in the area but they don't come to play with us

Old male Wandering Albatross. They get progressively whiter with age, this bird is very likely over 30 years old, probably closer to 50.

Juvenile Southern Giant Petrel. We are checking young Southern GPs for satellite transmitters - two are in the area that were fitted with transmitters on Kerguelen before fledging a few months ago.
Wandering Albatross - either a young male or old female. This and the bird above spent most of a sunny day circling the ship.

3 comments:

USelaine said...

Sublime opening photo. The creatures in your study tray look surprisingly colorful. Is that a result of being brought to the surface?

The old male could be even as old as I am then. Able to drink seawater are they?

CatB said...

The krill type creatures are very cool :-)
I love the chinstrap penguins playing with the boat too.

Dave said...

The trawl catches have a nice of 'terror from the deep' kind of feeling.