Four stations were sampled overnight and it's the Big Polychaete that has people talking around the breakfast table, as Martin reports:
'This magnificent bristle-worm (a polynoid or scale-worm) was about 9 inches (230 mm) long, 3.5 inches (90 mm) across, with scales more than 1 inch (24 mm) in diameter and weighed about 330 gm - at just three to the kilo this is by far the largest polychaete seen by any of the benthic ecologists on board.To top it off, the bristle-worms arrived complete with their own over-size parasitic nematodes (up to 4 inches long) infesting the space under the scales.'
A crowd gathers in the electronics lab where Kim is replaying the video footage from the last AAD trawl. We descend to 612metres and bounce along the floor of the sea watching the most exquisite displays. Creatures that look like plants sway and scoot in the path of the trawl. Fish blink and dart by. Or just blink.
Feather stars are a crinoid — a flower-like arrangement of multiple delicate tendrils resembling translucent feathers. Each slender 'arm' moves in a cycling motion as they propel themselves around. By chance the camera captures center stage a complete act of a feather star ballet.
Unforgettable. I love looking out of my porthole - half sea, half sky. With or without sun or clouds or waves or ice, sometimes it's in monochrome, at other times pastels. Occasionally it's sunset rich, but it's always lovely to look apon.
Tonight there's texture in the water and a cloud show in the sky.
The sun is dipping onto the horizon and the first sunset cannot be far away.
Pic: big bristle-worm
Margot Foster is a journalist currently on board the Australian Aurora Australis, an Australian research vessel currently participating in the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML, IPY project 53). She works with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).