I visited St. Johns, Newfoundland on an Ireland-Newfoundland Partnership Scheme grant in 2010, to collect samples for my PhD and to part-take in a biodiversty cruise on board the CCGS Hudson. The collaboration between the Biodiversity Research Group in GMIT and the Montevecchi Lab in Memorial University of Newfoundland has since strengthened. The R.V. Celtic Explorer is heading for Newfoundland and Labrador for an over-wintering cod survey. To maximise the return for this trip, a multi-disciplinary research cruise will take place during the transit to Canada. The Celtic Explorer will depart from Cork on 29 January and arrive in St. John's, Newfoundland after 7 February (depending on the weather!).
The Canadian Marine Institute have sponsored flights for myself and Alessandro Pierini (GMIT and IWDG) to return to Ireland after the cruise, but to return to Canada for the return transit after the cod survey is complete. We will carry out a visual and acoustic survey for the duration of the transit. Simultaneously, a bird survey will be carried out by Emily Wilson (MUN) as well as a continuous plankton recorder and EK60 survey (for identifying plankton and fish biomass).
Our route should take us over highly varied and dynamic habitats including shelf edge canyons, (Porcupine & Grand Banks) mid-ocean fracture zones (Charley Gibbs Fracture Zone) and sea mounts (Hecate Seamount & Orphan Knol)l with extensive areas of abyssal plain in between. Surveys of this kind during the winter have been few and far between so we don't know what to expect. It is known that the mid-Atlantic ridge is a stronghold for the poorly understood sei whale, sperm whales and beaked whales. Migrating humpbacks are believed to migrate further offshore during their southward migration, but we may have missed the main migratory event, with news from Cape Verde that the humpbacks have already started to arrive there.
I will try to update this blog at least once a day and ask others to add to it. Fingers crossed for some favourable weather and that the megafauna gods will be kind to us.
Conor Ryan
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