A clatter of footsteps in the stairwell is a sure signal to grab the camera and follow the mob. I raced up to C deck and saw a distant spouting. The CTD door was open to the sea so I ran back down to E deck. The CASO crew was riveted, watching a pair of humpbacks curving and spouting. They moved aft and we all jumped like fleas across the trawl deck to watch them coast and roll and play in a large drift close to the ship. I scurried up to the mezzanine, craning over the ship’s rail on the way, keeping them in sight, then made a dash up the stairwell and back onto C deck.
Rail space was scant but the show went on fxor nearly an hour. I counted 6 or 7 milky blurs beneath the water and to a chorus of ‘ahhs’ and gasps of delight, watched the bubbles form before each one rose and pointed a bumpy nose skyward, rolled and slapped barnacled flippers and fins, then curved its back in a lazy arc, shooshed and spouted before diving below. So close we could hear them and feel the spray and so close as to even catch a hint of fishy breath!
The last benthic trawls for this section of our grid were made in some of the deepest water yet and revealed extraordinarily colourful gardens of the abyss. The catch of one trawl might have got away when the net burst at the seams but the camera revealed a wonderland as it panned over a seabed garden 800metres below the surface, as Martin reported in his Sitrep:
“The sea-bed was 100% covered with living material - colourful branching coralline species and gorgonians forming the major lower storey structure and large branching sponges the upper storey. Amongst this were numerous sea-stars, sea-cucumbers, crustacea and fish of types at yet unseen. After repairing the trawl nets we returned to re-sample the site, this time being very cautious with the time allowed for the trawl to be on the bottom, and were rewarded with a relatively small catch but with many species not previously collected.”
Even deeper into the abyss at 2000 metres another habitat was documented. This was sparser but notable for the fact that nearly everything there was coloured a bright red. The crustaceans were redder than others found, and corallines and sponges brilliant and uniformly red. Speculation ran around the lunch tables. “Why red?” The colour spectrum was dissected. At this depth, where light is limited, only blue light is reflected. Red things won’t reflect light - making them invisible. A form of protection perhaps?
But if they can’t be seen, how do they socialize?
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).