The expedition is over. It’s back to the laboratory at the University of Maine for both myself and the samples we collected on this cruise. It is time to look back on our field program and realize just how well it went – we had great weather, we had great diving, and we had a great crew – can’t really get better than that.

Sailing out of Tracy Arm, through Holkham Bay as the sun sets. Photo by Rhian Waller.

And now to the important part – the samples, the results, and soon, the publications. The focus of this project has been on examining the reproduction and development of Red Tree Corals in Tracy Arm fjord. This is a species that usually lives in a few hundred meters of water in the North Pacific, yet here in the Southeastern fjords of Alaska, we can swim amongst it at just ten meters’ depth. Though exploring why this is is beyond the scope of this particular project, we are hoping to use this phenomenon to tell us more about the deep-sea populations of this coral, where samples are much more sparse and very expensive to collect. This population in Tracy Arm is like a window into the deep-sea, where we can conduct experiments by SCUBA (much easier with your own two hands, than with submersibles or remotely operated vehicles) and revisit the site many times (seven times over two years in this case).

Measuring each colony we tagged and sampled is an important part of the project. Here Rhian Waller holds up a meter stick underwater while video of the colony is taken. Photo by Bob Stone.

So why are we interested in reproduction? Well, reproduction is a fundamental process that every single species on the planet needs to undergo to maintain populations. How, when, and how much a species reproduces can tell us (amongst other things) how healthy the population is, whether there is a time of year the species should be protected because it’s reproducing, and what are the chances of recolonization after a detrimental effect. These Red Tree Corals form important habitat for many species of invertebrates and fish, they provide protection from predators (lots of places to hide), food sources (through the other animals that live there) and sometimes even a place to lay eggs or raise young. In Alaska alone this species has been found to harbor over a dozen species of rockfish and many species of juvenile crab, making it an important part of the ecosystem. These corals are frequently impacted by fishing gear, and are under threat from changes in our oceans’ chemistry (see this interesting article from the Marine Conservation Institute), and currently we know very little about how these species survive in our oceans or where they live, let alone how to protect and preserve them.

Eggs (peach colored) and sperm (opaque) of the Red Tree coral extracted while onboard the research vessel. Photo by Rhian Waller.

To study reproduction my laboratory uses microscopy. We take pieces of coral tissue and embed them in wax or plastic and then thin-slice them to just a few microns. We then mount these tiny slices on slides, stain them a variety of colors, and take a look under the microscope to see what we can see. Using these techniques we can see how eggs and sperm are formed, how they grow and what time of year they are produced – all vital information in understanding how these Red Tree corals thrive in the fjords!

Sections through the corals tell us a lot of information on how they reproduce. This section is just 5 microns thick, shows a male coral, and is magnified 40 times! Photo by Rhian Waller.

Using this information from seven trips to the same site, we’ll build up a time series – a look through the past two years – to see how the corals are reproducing, and whether they are healthy. This is important information alone, but on top of this, when we get samples from the deep ocean, I’ll be able to compare them to these shallow fjords and look for differences, so this research goes farther than just the fjords of southeastern Alaska.

The last look at Tracy Arm fjord. I hope one day I'll be back to check on our corals and see how they're doing. Photo by Rhian Waller.

Thanks for joining us on our expedition, be sure to tune into our next cold-water coral expedition!

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Alaska Corals 2013 – Heading into Stephens Passage

Alaska Corals 2013 – Days 1-3

Alaska Corals 2013 – Snow, Ice, Corals and Earthquakes! 

On Friday we awoke as usual – bleary eyed, climbing out of dark cabins having had late nights preparing samples – and saw something different: ice, and a lot of it. Slick ice covering the surface of the water, with small and large icebergs dotted around our sample site. Strange, but we didn’t think too much of it until the news came through the satellite communicator that there had been an earthquake in the night, a 7.5 centered just a few hundred miles from our location. There was no tsunami, and being onboard a ship none of us felt anything…..but that glacier sure had.

Looking out for icebergs, we check out a big one that floated close to our study area while Rhian (pictured) and Bob were in the water. Photo by Julia Johnstone.

Though we had to be cautious going in that no major ice would cover where we were diving, it sure made for a beautiful day. Icebergs come in so many shapes and colors, reflecting back shades of brilliant blue when they’re fresh. The slick ice created a sheen across the surface of the fjord, gently swaying with the tides. Now it really felt like winter in Alaska!

Bob Stone prepares an array of sensors we deployed at the site. These sensors will measure changes in ocean acidification at our coral site, and will be left out for several years monitoring the changes happening in our oceans. Photo by Rhian Waller.

The diving has been highly successful. Just prior to the trip one of our divers had to drop out of the cruise, so it was just Bob Stone from Juneau and me. Diving at a remote site with only two divers is risky – all it would take is one of us to get a cold and the whole program would be in peril, but we had no choice and pushed on with large doses of vitamin C everyday and conservative dive profiles! We’ve had success, we’ve not only managed to get all the samples that are headed back to my laboratory, but we also did some site tidy up (removing old tags), exploring some new areas, and deployed an Ocean Acidification sensor array in our coral patch. This sensor is part of another project, but Bob bought it along in case we had time to put it out. Corals are sensitive to changes in ocean chemistry – as the oceans are getting more acidic, they may have a harder time building skeletons and producing larvae. With this array my colleague Bob Stone of NOAA will be able to keep tabs on what is happening at this coral site.

Julia Johnstone preserving coral specimens on the back deck of the RV Steller. You can't get a better view than that! Photo by Rhian Waller.

And now we’re headed home, to process samples at the Auke Bay Laboratory in Juneau. All in all a huge success. This may be my last time in Tracy Arm though, so i’ve been savoring every moment, both below and above the water. This is one of those rare places, where fewer divers than you can count on one hand have dove and seen. Where even the marine radio won’t reach and you’re completely out of touch with the rest of humanity. Where when the sun shines on the top of the mountains and glistens off the aquamarine ocean, the scale of this glacial cut fjord becomes instantly apparent, and you feel so small. I think it’s important we take ourselves places where we can feel small occasionally, to remind us that we are protectors of our lands and our oceans, and to understand it we need to explore it.

Getting ready for a dive in the fjord, Rhian Waller in drysuit (left) to protect from the 36F water, and undergraduate student Julia Johnstone in warm waterproof clothes to tend the dive skiff. Photo by Rhian Waller.

Our trusty research vessel - the RV Steller. Photo by Julia Johnstone.

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It’s the end of day three of our Alaska coral expedition, and so far all is going swimmingly well. Despite it being mid-winter here in Alaska, the weather couldn’t have been better – high 20’s out of the water and 36F in the water, glassy flat calm seas and beautiful snow topped mountains to boot. Visibility underwater isn’t quite what we’d hoped for, but it is 20-30ft+, which is more than we need to do our science, and more than enough to enjoy the scenery while you’re working.

Student Julia Johnstone gets suited up in her 'Gumby Suit' (survival suit) as part of our day 1 safety training. Photo by Rhian Waller.

To recap our whirlwind three days: We left the NOAA dock in Juneau at 6am on Thursday morning, bright and early and still in darkness. The trip down Stephens Passage, past the Taku Inlet (notorious for high winds) into Holkham Bay and onto Tracy Arm were thankfully uneventful; calm seas and a push from the tides meant we arrived in time to put in a dive that afternoon.

As we round the corner on the R/V Steller, our sample site comes into view on a snowy Alaskan winter day. Photo by Julia Johnstone.

Sailing into Tracy Arm always gives me a thrill. The narrow fjord is bordered by 4000ft+ mountains, all covered in a dusting of snow with low-lying clouds hiding their true height. The rich aquamarine water gleamed as we turned ‘big bend’ and edged closer to our dive site. As we came around the corner to our sample site, it all came flooding back – the steep valley, the high walls, the mark on the wall that looks a little like a mermaid showing us where our study area begins – it was all there. We got ready to jump in.

36F water and snow doesn't stop the dive team. Rhian Waller and Bob Stone prepare for the first dive at the site. Photo by Julia Johnstone.

Rolling backwards into the water from the skiff reminded me instantly this was winter. My gauge didn’t read more than 36F the whole dive. But there they were – our corals, dotted with fluorescent orange and green marker tape from previous visits and small yellow tags telling us who is who. The first dive was really a ‘look-see’, to check the conditions, shake down the gear and get into the groove; but the visibility was so good, and everything went well, we collected 10 samples right there the first day. And so went the second day – first dive 7 samples; second dive 12 samples; third dive 6 samples – pretty soon we’ll have all 38 colonies sampled for microscopic study and move on to other sampling tasks.

The scale is hard to comprehend. Diving under 4000ft high mountains makes you feel very small. Photo by Julia Johnstone.

Today’s dives have been a little tougher. The day has been overcast, so the dives have been darker, making our three daytime dives seem like night dives (particularly our late afternoon dive). Along with some equipment failures and some high current on dive three (combined with a leaky mask!), we’re ready to start day four tomorrow fresh. On the good side we’ve finished our main sampling for histology and have moved on to collections for ultramicroscopy (I’ll be explaining the samples in a later post!), DNA and measuring our tagged colonies. Three more days to go, and we’re ahead of ourselves right now. Never speak too soon on expedition though; being ahead is a good place to be, as you never know what a new day brings when at sea!

Boat tenders are essential to dive operations. Here Julia Johnstone tends the dive boat in the wind, ice and snow while the divers are underwater. Our mothership, the R/V Steller, is in the background. Photo by Dan Foley.

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Juneau from Mt Roberts, taken at the beginning of this project, in September 2010. Photo by R. Waller.

Follow along as NG Grantee Rhian Waller explores the surprisingly diverse corals that dwell deep in the fjords of Alaska, and discover what they can tell us about the rest of the ocean as well.

Tomorrow we sail out into Stephens Passage heading towards the fjords of Southeastern Alaska, to a sample site around six hours south of the Alaskan capitol Juneau, to a place called Tracy Arm, the northerly fjord branch of Holkham bay. Tracy Arm is possibly one of the most spectacular places I have ever been to. High snow topped mountains, steep sided walls dropping straight into aquamarine colored waters to thousands of feet below the surface, and terminated by twin glaciers – the North and South Sawyer. The scenery alone is enough to take your breath away, but what really holds it for me is the scenery below the frigid waters.

A wall in Tracy Arm fjord where corals lurk beneath the surface. Photo by R. Waller.

Corals. Large corals, growing to 8ft tall sticking right out of those up-and-down walls. Primnoa pacifica to be exact, the Red Tree coral, a gorgonian sea fan, very similar to those in tropical waters.

A Red Tree coral collected from 70ft in Tracy Arm at the beginning of our study (September 2010). Photo by R. Waller

These are corals that are found in abundance in the deep-waters of the Gulf of Alaska – ~500m depth are where they are usually found. However, similar to the fjords of Chile (see Patagonian Fjords Expedition Posts here), this is an area where Deepwater Emergence occurs. Fjords often mimic environmental conditions seen in the deep ocean (cold all year, dark, little competition for space, etc.), so some deep species have been found shallow enough to SCUBA dive around, and even study.

Scientific divers prepare to dive our sample site in Tracy Arm fjord in March 2011. Photo by R. Waller.

In September 2010, myself and NOAA collaborators and colleagues set up a monitoring site for Red Tree corals in Tracy Arm fjord. These corals form vital habitat for many fisheries species here in Alaska (a dozen species of Rockfish and crab amongst others), so we want (and need!) to understand how this species survives both in the fjords and in the deep ocean so we can begin to protect it from fisheries damage. This project has involved tagging 38 large coral colonies on the walls of Tracy Arm, and taking small pieces every three months from each coral. These samples have been processed in my laboratory at the University of Maine to help us better understand how this species reproduces and makes larvae – processes vital for species survival, and if interrupted can be devastating for populations.

The polyps of the Red Tree coral Primnoa pacifica. Photo by C. Clark.

This is our final expedition of the project in Tracy Arm, so I have both the nervous excitement that going into the field always brings, but is also twinged with a little sadness at the finality. I’m excited to get the last piece of the puzzle, the  final sample in our cycle and to see the corals again in the visibility that only winter in Alaska brings. With the glacier frozen up tight, the fjord clears from visibility of a just few feet (or less!) in summer, to 100+ft in winter. ‘Truly spectacular’ doesn’t begin to summarize it.

So the last two days have been taken over by travel, equipment testing and packing, and tomorrow we set out, into Stephens Passage and south to the fjords. Wish us luck on our expedition and stay tuned for more updates!

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Lobsters, like this one from Monhegan, cannibalize each other in the wild. Photo by Rhian Waller.

The humble Maine Lobster has been exposed as a cannibal. University of Maine graduate student Noah Oppenheim and advisor Dr. Rick Wahle presented work at “The American Lobster in a Changing Ecosystem” symposium in Portland, Maine this last week, that showed lobsters prey on themselves in the wild. This phenomena had been seen in captivity, but recent experiments with cameras and tethered lobsters have shown this also happens in the wild. Is this a new behavior or one just not spotted before? It’s hard to tell, but populations of lobster in Maine have been skyrocketing. The catch of Maine lobsters rose to 104 million pounds last year (a record), compared with 23 million pounds in 1981;  and 2012 is expected to be a bumper year too. Overfishing of species that feed on lobsters in the wild (e.g. cod and halibut) is likely to blame, and now it seems there are so many lobsters in the Gulf of Maine, they’re bumping into, and feeding, on one another. I’ll be sure to be more careful diving around them in the future……

Click to see Noah explaining his findings to the Portland Press Herald.

Like a scene from Moby Dick, a rare white whale was spotted off the coast of Spitsbergen in Norway by maritime engineer Dan Fisher of the UK. Swimming alongside a pod of other, regular grey humpback whales, this whale likely has a condition called leucism, which causes a reduction in skin pigmentation. Animals with this condition rarely survive long in the wild, because they lack their natural disguise and can more easily be picked off by predators, however the white whale, now named Willow, appears to be an adult fully incorporated into a pod.

Get more details from the Daily Mail.

Massive coccolithophore bloom in the Barents Sea. These blooms are caused by high levels of sunlight in the arctic summer, and the right combination of nutrients to allow growth. By Jeff Schmaltz (NASA Earth Observatory).

Unbeknownst to most scientists until a few days ago, two hundred thousand pounds of iron sulphate were dumped into North Pacific Ocean in July, with the aim to trigger a large plankton bloom. This experiment was conducted by the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, under the direction of businessman Russ George. Why dump this dirty brown powder into the ocean and why to trigger a plankton bloom? All in the name of reversing man-made climate change.

Phytoplankton is photosynthetic, needing sunlight and nutrients to grow, taking up carbon dioxide in the process and producing oxygen as a by-product. This phytoplankton then dies, falling to the bottom of the ocean, and taking that ‘sequestered’ carbon dioxide with it, trapping it at the bottom of the ocean. One of the major nutrients phytoplankton needs to grow is iron, an insoluble nutrient and often found in limited quantities, inhibiting large plankton blooms from occurring. So by adding iron to the ocean, we can increase the numbers of phytoplankton photosynthesizing, using up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locking it up, deep in our oceans.

Or at least that’s the theory. Geoengineering is the term coined for deliberately modifying our environment to tackle man-made climatic changes on a global scale. It all sounds so simple – an easy route to solving our carbon emission crisis. The controversy comes that we don’t fully understand the consequences of manipulating our environment on a global scale, and we have to weigh up whether those consequences are better, or worse, than the problem we are trying to fix. We’ve seen what’s happened time after time when we’ve modified the food chain – fisheries collapses, extinction of species – we know well that connections that seem small can have drastic consequences we didn’t even consider. In addition, as that large bloom dies, decay will use up oxygen, potentially creating large anoxic zones, smothering important bottom habitats in the deep ocean.

The ‘experiment’ that was executed by George and colleagues is primarily under fire because it was done undercover, without scientific peer review or process, and without international collaboration, yet can have global consequences. It is also the largest iron fertilization experiment to have occurred anywhere – 200,000 pounds versus a few thousand pounds. Other smaller scale international experiments over the last fifteen-plus years have concluded that the sequestering efficiency is low (and sometimes no effect was seen) – the amount of iron you’d need to make even a slight dent in our carbon emissions is in the million tons per year, and even if you put in that amount, it may just not work. Unregulated iron fertilization on this scale could have dramatic consequences and goes against an international moratoria created by the UN to protect ocean environments. Far from being a savior, this experiment is being called a large scale dumping of waste into our oceans.

What do you think, was it a worthwhile test or badly handled? 

Portrait of Ada Lovelace in 1838 by William Henry Mote (Wikimedia Commons)

Today, the 16th of October, is Ada Lovelace Day. You’d be forgiven for not having heard of Ada Lovelace, or of this celebration each October. It’s one of the more unusual dates, but if you’re one of the many (yet still minority of) women in science, this is a day you recognize, and a day that recognizes you.

Lady Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was born in Britain in 1815, not a time known for women scientists.  Raised in a household of science and mathematics, in 1833 Ada began to work with Charles Babbage (the “father of the computer”), who called Ada affectionately, the “Enchantress of Numbers.” The pair worked on Babbage’s theoretical Analytical Engine, an unrealized precursor to the modern computer, and Ada is recognized as publishing the very first computer programs. It is Ada’s work that inspired Alan Turing, who built the first modern computer in the 1940′s.

I've been lucky enough to work with many amazing female scientists. Here myself (right) and Laura Robinson (left) discuss the day's plan on one of our own research and exploration cruises to the Antarctic (NBP1103). It wasn't until the 1950's that women scientists were able to work in the Antarctic. By Rhian Waller.

Ada was a strong lady, who followed her scientific and technological passions, much the scandal at the time. Interests outside the home and ‘society’ were much frowned upon, as well as working with men who were not her husband. Ada has become a symbol for us women in science, to keep going when times are tough, to follow the scientific method, to follow your passion.

The numbers are changing, there are more women in science today than there have ever been, but we are still a minority. I am lucky to be in the field of marine biology, where there are more women than in most scientific fields, yet most departments in the U.S. see less than 20% women faculty, and even fewer tenured. I am always encouraged by the young and enthusiastic women I see through my laboratory – the undergraduates, the graduate students and the postdocs. There are challenges ahead for them, but if you have the passion and drive, you can do anything.

Here’s to all the women scientists and explorers out there – keep up the good work!

No longer just for polar bear, melting Arctic sea ice has implications for us all. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

This year has seen the Arctic sea ice sheet melt further, and faster, than has ever been seen before in human history – a whopping 760,000 square kilometers less than ever recorded (which is 3.29 million square kilometers below the average minimum). Though images of polar bears and walrus stranded on melting ice-cubes pop up, and we morn the ever-increasing loss of their habitat; what happens at the poles will not stay at the poles. The affect of the Arctic sea ice diminishing will not just remain in the far north, we can (and should) expect more and more extreme weather as a result of this year’s ice loss.

Arctic sea ice extent for September 16, 2012 was 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that day. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. From the National Sea Ice Data Center.

As the Arctic Ocean becomes more and more exposed with the loss of its ice-white blanket in the summer, more and more water will be evaporated into the atmosphere, creating increased humidity and stormy weather as it’s precipitated out. The ice cover in the north also reflects sunlight and heat, cooling the upper atmosphere and cooling the planet’s overall climate. In addition, as permafrost areas warm and melt, methane, a greenhouse gas usually trapped under a layer of ice, is released. As more methane is released into the atmosphere, the atmosphere will get warmer – creating a feedback loop that will warm the Arctic even faster than before.

The graph above shows Arctic sea ice extent as of September 17, 2012, along with daily ice extent data for 2007 and 2005, the previous record low years. 2012 is shown in blue and 2007 in green. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation ranges of the data. From the National Sea Ice Data Center.

Warmer, wetter and stormier summers are likely in our future, but conversely winters may be colder than past years. The open Arctic Ocean could cause heat advection to be faster, changing the annual high and low pressures and weakening the input of warm air from the south through the winter months. More water in the atmosphere and a cooler winter climate could equal more snow and ice storms in the Northern Hemisphere, creating drastic extremes in annual temperatures.

Though there is no way to predict the exact weather patterns that will happen on a year by year basis, but we do know the trend is not looking good.  Hotter and colder, wetter and drier — what was once classed as “extreme” will become the norm everywhere around the globe. With more than a touch of sadness, it is with almost certainty I will see an open Arctic Ocean within my lifetime.

It’s more than time for us all to start paying attention to what is happening in the Polar Oceans.

Arctic Sea and Ice News, National Snow and Ice Data Center

“Ice-Free Arctic Sea May be Years, Not Decades, Away” Richard Kerr, 28th Sept 2012, Science News

A misty morning for our last day of diving in the Comau Fjord. Photo by Rhian Waller.

It seems like only yesterday we were embarking from Boston to southern Chile, eager to start the science, eager to see “deep-sea” corals in a habitat shallow enough that we could reach by SCUBA diving. And yet here we are, two weeks later, sitting in Santiago airport, taking stock and finishing up writing dive logs and lab notes.

The dive team on this expedition - Dan Genter, myself, and Chris Rigaud (Left to Right). Photo by Rhian Waller.

The last few days of diving and sampling were a whirlwind. Bad weather and sites where corals had perished unbeknownst to us meant that coming back from Pumalin Park it was a scramble to get another site cataloged and sampled and a logger deployed.

Walking to the dive locker each morning makes you feel like you're living in a tree house! Photo by Rhian Waller.

The primary objective of this study is to find out how Desmophyllum dianthus (a cold-water, and usually deep-sea, hard coral) reproduces – vital information we just don’t know. To be able to investigate reproduction well, you need samples from different seasons in the same year. This is a luxury we deep-sea biologists rarely get because of the remoteness of deepwater sites; because it’s hard and expensive to get ship time and submersible time; and because the open-ocean environment rarely stays calm enough to work through 12 months of the year.

The Patagonian fjords however provide the almost perfect natural laboratory for such a study – they house a deep-sea species living shallow enough for researchers to sample without using expensive submersibles and robots, and protected enough within a fjord so you can sample in every season. Why and how these species (that usually live below 1500m) exist here we’re not sure, but the high and low latitude fjord systems provide a habitat similar to the deep sea: cold all year, dark, and with little competition from photosynthesizing organisms like algae.

Prevalent in the fjord region, salmon farms like this one can sit just meters away from a coral population. Photo by Rhian Waller.

A secondary objective is to pick three populations in different environments (two different fjords and a site close to a salmon farm), and look at how their reproduction changes in these different areas. Returning from Reñihué Fjord, I had two sites down – Liliguape, at the end of the Comau fjord, open to the Gulf of Ancud, well flushed with oceanic water; and Reñihué, further within a fjord, but a healthy population, growing tall and large. The next step was to find a site close to a salmon farm, though everywhere we’d looked, there were not enough living corals to start this part of the study (you need enough so you can sample and not impact the population by taking individuals away for analysis).

One of the unpredictables of working in the field - we returned to our sample site and found this sea star had draped its arm right across the light meter's sensor! Photo by Rhian Waller.

So Dan Genter, Chris Rigaud and myself began the search at a few sites close to the Huinay Scientific Field Station – easily resampled by the station’s technicians over the next year before I return. With luck we found an area quickly, deeper than we really wanted (close to 100ft), but with enough live corals to sustain the study, and close enough to a salmon farm that the corals must be bathed in run-off. With two dives our goals were accomplished: deploy the logger (measuring temperature, salinity and light), perform photographic transects, and collect specimens to send back to my laboratory.

The site close to the field station - Desmophyllum corals sit within a crack in the walls of the fjord, with urchins, coralline algae and sea stars abundant. Photo by Rhian Waller.

This left us with just one day to spare, and we were lucky enough to have the station’s director, Vreni Haussermann, take us on a dive to another coral area to collect not live corals, but fossil corals for a collaboration with a geochemist friend of mine.

This was possibly one of the most beautiful dives of my life, and it was instantly apparent why the station’s scientists are preserving this site (no live corals are ever taken from this area). At 90ft depth and going back into the bedrock for over 15ft was a cave, the ceiling covered in Desmophyllum corals as far as flashlight would shine. Even a stray air bubble would be enough to knock these fragile creatures from the ceiling above. We set to work in the tall piles of fossil corals lying at the bottom of the cave, showing just how long these deep-sea creatures have been living in the fjords. An amazing site, and an amazing last dive of this expedition.

Fossil corals collected from below a cave. These corals will be used to look at paleoclimate data, and may tell us how long this species has been living within the fjord. Photo by Rhian Waller.

With a little sadness we returned to the station and began packing equipment and samples for the long ride home.

But I’ll be back next year – to collect the loggers and download their valuable data, to inventory the samples the assistants at the Huinay Scientific Field Station will have collected for me, and to dive once again in fields of (usually) deep-sea corals.

Heading home through the Comau fjord towards Hornopiren. It's been a very successful expedition, and we look forward to next year! Photo by Rhian Waller.

I would like to thank the fantastic help and assistance given to this expedition from all those at the Huinay Scientific Field Station – this expedition and valuable science could not have been done without you – Muchas Gracias! 

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