Cast your mind back to a time when things were normal — the second weekend of March 2020. A time before lockdowns and social distancing; when pubs still opened, international travel was easy and live sports were a thing. This story starts in a bar in Tenerife, where a group of scientists, sailors and technicians were enjoying the sun and relishing in the sporting prowess of the England rugby team, as they stormed to victory over the Welsh. We were enjoying our last taste of normal, for what we thought would be a short six weeks. The team was about to embark on a voyage of discovery across the Atlantic, solving some of the many mysteries of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

The expedition was part of the RAPID project (https://www.rapid.ac.uk/rapidmoc/) which has been continuously monitoring the AMOC since 2004. The backbone of the project is the RAPID array of around 20 or so moorings. These are situated along the 26.5N parallel, stretching from the Canary Islands in the East and Bahamas in the West. The moorings are concentrated off the West coast of Morocco, the mid-Atlantic ridge, and the East of the Bahamas. They’re a real feat of engineering, with some more than 5 km tall. Dotted along the length of the moorings’ anchor wires are MicroCAT (CTD) instruments measuring conductivity, temperature, and pressure, which with geostrophic balance can be used to estimate the strength of the ocean circulation. There’s also a host of more exotic instruments such as current meters, oxygen sensors, remote autonomous samplers and others.

Back to our story — the crew had been tasked with recovering, servicing and redeploying these moorings. Within a day or so we were well on our way and getting stuck into the laborious process of hunting down and laying out moorings. Thankfully (for variety is the spice of life) there were more than just moorings to keep us occupied. Back in Tenerife we had been joined by scientists from NOAA who had entrusted us with a precious cargo — a set of 12 glass spheres containing pressure inverted echo-sounders. These ‘PIES’, as they are affectionately known, may one day become ubiquitous in the global ocean monitoring system. It is hoped that they will be able to replicate some of the functionality of a mooring, but at a fraction of the cost. The PIES are lowered (read: lowered to the surface then dropped for a descent of several thousand metres) to the bottom of the ocean where they remain for a year, measuring the properties of the water column above them. When they’re done measuring they then release their anchor and float up to the surface, beaming back their data to satellites. Though the system has undergone extensive testing, this is the first time they have been deployed in anger — as their data comes in, it will be fascinating to see how successful their deployment has been! 

Having completed the servicing of the Eastern section of the array we embarked on a 4 day steam to the mid-Atlantic ridge, with a brief pause to deploy an Argo float (http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/). Around half way through the passage, a meeting of all the ships company was called. The ship had received a message informing us we were to turn around and steam back to Southampton. It must be said that this wasn’t unexpected. When we left the Canaries, we were aware of the coronavirus and its increasingly rapid spread. It was strange at sea watching the situation unfold, being so very isolated from everything going on back at home. We saw first the toilet roll shortages, then, as the days went on, it became clear things were becoming serious and the virus was causing a huge amount of suffering. Within three days of the decision to turn back having been made, the UK went into lockdown — it was clear heading home was the right decision.

It was to be a long and slow steam back, but we were safe and there were still many other things to keep us occupied…..  

Our 10-day voyage to Southampton gave us ample time to complete our cruise report sections, as standard for all research cruises. We also had enough time to complete some more unusual tasks such as 3D mapping the ship, using a special 3D imaging camera kindly lent to us by colleagues at BAS. Whilst the mapping began back in Tenerife, the additional no-science days allowed us to complete the project. It was an amazing opportunity to enter areas that us scientists wouldn’t normally work in: crawling (literally) around the engine room, workshops and thruster room. It was also an opportunity to chat to the engineers who keep the ship running. We also managed to map one of the two lifeboats. The completed scans will be used in future public outreach activities. 

The return journey also gave the captain the perfect excuse to hold another muster and fire drill for the crew. Whilst the crew were busy extracting a simulated “casualty” from the engine room in full breathing apparatus and fire-proof suits, we were given the much less stressful task of “boundary cooling the fire” from the aft deck. In reality, this meant aiming the hoses overboard and seeing how far you could propel the water.

We may not be marine biologists, but we were delighted to see many dolphins keeping us company on our return journey, with a brief glimpse of a whale. Other non-science cruise highlights were the amazing sunsets we got almost each evening. It was a real treat to spend many an evening on the bridge and Forecastle Deck stargazing under the clearest skies we’re likely to come across. From conversations with the very friendly and knowledgeable bridge crew, we gained more insight into the operation of the ship too. Some of us also got steering lessons!

After 20 days at sea, on Saturday 28th March we arrived at the Port of Southampton and tied up alongside the National Oceanography Centre. All our equipment was put into cages and lifted onto the quayside. Of course this was all done with social distancing in mind, with quayside staff not allowed to come aboard to assist for fear of infecting us. Once the majority of this was done, all scientists and technicians signed off and went home to sit out the lockdown and discover what this “new normal” is all about. In some sense we were very lucky: many commercial seafarers are still stranded offshore with no end in sight to their ordeal. We had also been at sea for the panic buying stage of the pandemic and supermarket stock levels had mostly recovered! Despite our cruise being cut short, the 3 weeks we spent at sea certainly taught us a great deal about time series data collection and was a valuable experience. Of course, we would like to thank chief scientist Ben Moat for inviting us to come aboard, and to all scientists, tech and crew who made the cruise an enjoyable success. 

About the Authors

Matt Clark is a SPITFIRE DTP PhD Student at the University of Southampton, National Oceanography Centre Southampton. You can follow Matt on Twitter: @Ocean_MattC

Fraser Goldsworth is a PhD student with the Oxford DTP in Environmental Research, University of Oxford. You can follow Fraser on Twitter: @FraserOcean

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Every expedition is full of firsts. First cruise with these colleagues, first time on this ship, first time in that location, first time collecting this type of sample or running that analysis on board. Even when it’s not new for me, it’s always new for someone, like the group of people rushing outside at the news of the first iceberg. I’ve seen hundreds, but still I grabbed my jacket and ran outside with them, infected by the excitement. It was a big, tabular iceberg, but it was miles way, just on the horizon against the cloudy-bright sky. Hundreds of photos later everyone went back inside to warm up with some tea, grinning like fools and reluctantly admitting that it didn’t show up very well in the pictures, but we had definitely, probably seen it.

The following day we sailed past a bright white iceberg, irregularly shaped and smooth in some places where it had rolled to expose the areas that had been melting below the waterline. Even from our safe distance, we could tell it dwarfed the ship, this time the excitement was mixed with awe. You can imagine the squeals when we saw penguins swimming around it. Although we like to joke that these “charismatic megafauna” steal the show, seeing marine animals in the wild is always special.

A friend in my oceanography class once told me, “If it’s too small to see, I don’t care about it.”  I am the exact opposite: it’s the tiny things, from plankton to molecules, that fascinate me, because these tiny things have the power to change the world. The reason our planet has an atmosphere with oxygen is a result of cyanobacteria, the photosynthetic bacteria that are still ubiquitous in the oceans. Today, about half of the oxygen we breathe comes from phytoplankton, even though most of us think only of forests when we hear the phrase “the lungs of the planet.”

Along with this generation of oxygen, photosynthesis also draws carbon out of the atmosphere, forming organic matter that can sink. Any carbon not decomposed on the way down can be buried in the seafloor, effectively removing it from the climate system, which is a natural carbon sink that is becoming increasingly important as human carbon emissions rise. Models suggest that if this biological sink in the ocean was turned off, CO₂ in the atmosphere would rise by ~200ppm [Parekh et al., 2006] (for context, current levels are 417 (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/) and the last glacial maximum was 190ppm (Sigman and Boyle, 2000).

However, in some areas of the ocean, phytoplankton aren’t reaching their full potential, and the Southern Ocean is one such region. Here, phytoplankton are limited by lack of iron [Tagliabue et al., 2017]. My research focuses on understanding the supply of iron from the Antarctic Peninsula, as the seafloor sediments and melting glaciers can provide iron to stimulate phytoplankton growth. We don’t yet know exactly how much iron is coming from these processes, and the Antarctic Peninsula is the fastest warming region of the Southern Hemisphere [Henley et al., 2019], so measuring the supply of iron and understanding how it might change with continued warming is crucial to understanding how carbon will cycle through this region in the future, and subsequently affect global climate.

There are many factors at play in how carbon cycling will respond to future warming, and many are interconnected. For example, as ice shelves melt this brings deep, iron-rich seawater to the surface. The melt water from the ice itself also contains iron. As this water moves offshore and out into the Southern Ocean, it can transport the iron to where it’s needed to promote phytoplankton growth and carbon uptake. Independent of any iron supply, as glaciers retreat this exposes new area of ocean where phytoplankton can grow – and new seafloor where this blue carbon can be buried.

This process is a small but significant carbon sink that we are only just starting to measure  – an early result from the project that myself and three colleagues joined in January [Barnes et al., 2020]. The project, aptly named ICEBERGS, aims to understand how glacial retreat along the Antarctic Peninsula impacts benthic ecosystems. My team’s goal was to sample the seafloor as well as glacial meltwater to constrain how much iron is supplied by these sources.

Studying how our planet is changing is how I ended up spending 28 months of my life in the Antarctic, surrounded by stunningly beautiful landscapes and incredibly smelly wildlife. It’s cold, it’s remote, and it can be very isolated; many of my expeditions have been four weeks away from home and family, but I’ve also spent 12 consecutive months there. The conditions can make routine tasks very challenging, but the sense of community and passion on the research ships and bases makes it even more rewarding. Whether it’s running outside together to see an iceberg, someone unexpectedly stopping in to help after their shift ends, or celebrating packing up the last of the cargo after a successful expedition.

Even after the science work ended, we had some firsts. We had crossed the Antarctic circle into 24h daylight, and heading back north we were looking forward to seeing darkness again. The first cloudless night we spent a long time lying on the deck above the bridge, enjoying our first glimpse of stars for weeks. One of the little things we don’t appreciate until it’s gone, like so many of the things we all miss during the pandemic as we maintain our distance to keep ourselves and our communities safe.

One aspect of the Antarctic that surprised me, and that I love sharing with people, is the variety of sounds that ice can make. The low clinking as brash ice washes against a rocky beach like oversized ice cubes. The muted whooshing of soft, thin sea ice tearing like paper as a small boat pushes through it. The crunch and groan of thick sea ice breaking apart around the bow of a research ship, and the constant scrape of that ice down the sides of the ship as we head toward our next sampling site. The lumps of glacial ice washed up on the beach, made from snow that’s so densely packed and compressed that it would be perfectly clear if not for the millions of tiny bubbles frozen throughout – walking past these in the bright sunshine sounds like being inside a popcorn machine, I think this is my favourite. Perhaps the most impressive though is the loud, deep cracking of an ice shelf, like a not-too-distant canon, the boom echoing off the surrounding mountains as everyone rushes to see where the noise came from, and if we can see any ice tumbling into the sea. When I make an iced coffee or G&T on a hot day, I always add the ice at the end, to hear the sharp crack of the ice cubes as I drop them in. Next time you find yourself with an ice cube tray, close your eyes and try to imagine how it would feel and sound if that ice cube was the size of a block of flats.

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Day 33, Station 57 – I got up at 4 am before sunrise, getting ready for our 9^th sampling station, or the 57^th of the Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT)-27 cruise. We have already spent over a month at sea since leaving NOCS, having passed Azores, crossed the Equator, traversing some of the bluest waters on the planet (due to low productivity, lack of ‘green lives’ at the surface), as well as low-oxygen waters linked to productive regions in both hemispheres, now we are arriving at the 40ºS ‘frontal zone’ where cold nutrient-rich water from the south meets the warm water from the north, resulting in turbulences yet extraordinarily high productivity. The waters at these latitudes are dubbed the ‘Roaring Forties’ – for its infamous high seas that we could totally attest now. The wind has been blowing strong in the past two days, with significantly cooler temperatures especially compared to the sunny tropics we passed under a week ago. We could see, and feel, the sea surface heaving up and down.

I was very anxious to know whether we could actually proceed with our sampling today. Our project, Shortcut in the Oceanic Nitrogen Cycle (SONiC), has been funded to add extra days to the existing AMT cruise, to conduct our research. I was therefore given choices on when to do our sampling, and we aim to cover as many ocean biogeochemical provinces[1] as possible, in order to check how widespread the phenomena we are investigating really are. I’d like to go to the very centre of this frontal zone, as it should be the most representative.  The marine and weather forecasts, however, predicted up to 6m of swells and strong winds.  So even if I opted to do our sampling on this day, there was a good chance that it would not happen for safety reasons.

Thankfully, we got the go-ahead from the captain, the cruise’s principal scientist and technical officers. Our first task was to deploy an array of four standalone pumps to filter hundreds of litres of water in situ at discrete depths down to 1000m, as we need to concentrate sufficient materials for protein analyses.  The night before, I prepared filters and secured them inside designated compartments of these pumps. As we brought these awkwardly heavy pumps onto the deck for deployment, the deck engineers were already working hard changing wires on the 3-storey high winch. Although they had done the same many times before, the rough sea and wind chill made it rather challenging for today.  While waiting and peering through the white caps at the sea surface, we spotted several moving black shades: a group of minke whales were just swimming by. Then followed a big tail fin rising up from the horizon against the beautiful, red-lit sky. Two humpbacks greeted us with their famous bridging posts only 100 m off the ship’s railings.  At this point, we were just putting our last pump into the water, and the glowing red sun has just risen.  What a way to start our day!

The rest of the day went very smoothly – water sampling with the CTD (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth)-Niskin-rosette, with which we sampled hundreds of litres of water that were distributed into fifty 4L bottles for our various incubation experiments. We subsampled each into numerous small tubes for various measurements a few times over 2 days, then we terminated the experiments by preserving materials, both water and particles, for various chemical and molecular analyses. After a lot of bottle-washing on the 3^rd day, our cycle would begin again on the 4^th.

Routine it may sound, no two days are exactly the same onboard ship: we are greeted by changing weather and sea conditions, while the organisms living underneath differ from one place and time to another. No matter how prepared we think we are, we never know for certain what awaits us when we start our day.

[1] Ocean biogeochemical provinces – oceanic regions of common chemical and biological characteristics, e.g. biological productivity shaped by the availability of essential nutrients (e.g. nitrogen, phosphorus, iron) that might in turn be regulated by physical parameters like ocean circulation. Examples include oligotrophic subtropical gyres, equatorial upwelling.

Dr. Phyllis Lam[i]

Associate Professor in Microbial Biogeochemistry

Ocean and Earth Science

[i] Dr. Phyllis Lam has been at sea onboard the RRS Discovery since 23^rd September, 2017.  After the AMT cruise that sailed from Southampton to Port Stanley via Azores and South Georgia, she is currently on a second cruise working on the project COMICS (Control over Mesopelagic Interior Carbon Storage) in the Scotia Sea, Southern Ocean, until 21^st December, 2017.

To find out more about Phyllis ‘s research view her publications.

The post A Typical ‘Atypical’ Day at Sea appeared first on Exploring our Oceans .

“At 0624 there was a huge impact on the starboard side of the vessel. I felt my world spin upside-down. The shriek of the gale was silent, it was completely black and the floor was now the roof”; Rod Briggs recalls what happened to him on the 40ft Vyndi in the 1990s to YachtingWorld (2017).

“We had been running ahead of a southerly gale and the course change at 0600 would have brought the marching seas even further astern; yet something, powerful enough to cross 60ft breaking seas, had picked us up and thrown us over like a toy.

“It seemed much longer than the few seconds it must have actually been until the righting momentum started. When it happened it was sudden and severe. I pulled open the hatch to witness devastation.

“The wheel had been ripped off, as had many of the deck fittings. One of the masts was hanging over the side and Errol had disappeared overboard.

“Looking astern into a wall of water turned silver in the early morning sun, I saw Pete in the water with the ferry buoy. He called to me as he was pulled up and over the crest of the wave away from the boat. I shouted back that we would turn the yacht around as soon as we could rig some emergency steering.

“A moment later I saw him again on the crest of another 60-footer moving fast and then he was gone. Although it appeared that we were making good progress to windward, we were going backwards. Pete and Errol, at the mercy not of the wind but of the Agulhas Current running at up to five knots, were getting further away from us all the time.

“Over the next few hours we let off 48 flares. Not one person responded. No trace of Pete or Errol was ever found.”

Evocative recounts of encounters with extremely large and unexpected waves that appear from nowhere and disappear without trace, have been told by seagoers for centuries; however, little or no physical evidence led to scientists dismissing them as simply tales or excuses for malpractice.

On New Year’s Day 1995, a wave of 25.6 metres struck the Draupner platform in the North Sea, where the significant wave height, the average wave height of the wave field, was 12 metres. This formed the first rogue wave ever to be detected by scientific instruments, and was confirmed with the minor damage to the platform caused by the event.

Now that scientists knew they existed, how were they formed? Can they be predicted?

The phenomenon was defined in 2000 as a large oceanic surface wave that exceeds the significant wave height by more than a factor of 2, and research was undertaken to better understand the process; however, despite the two decades of research, the origin of this rare but destructive oceanic phenomenon is still disputed.

The next blog post will discuss the scientist theories on the processes of formations, and how my Ph.D. research at the University of Southampton is contributing to the field.

References:

YachtingWorld (2017, April, 12). Rogue waves – real-life stories of the destructive power of the sea. http://www.yachtingworld.com/special-reports/rogue-waves-real-life-stories-destructive-power-sea-106135/2#DQlaQ3jZYpo3dFh9.99

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Today’s guest blog post is from my good friend and office mate Christina Wood.

Christina will tell you all about herself and the work she does, take it away Christina…

I am a PhD student studying at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK. In March 2017, I participated in a cruise to the Barents Sea to assist researchers as part of the ongoing MAREANO project. This project has been running for the last 10 years and aims to map the depth and topography, sediment composition, contaminants, biotopes and different habitats present throughout Norwegian waters. This leg of the project focused on mapping a transect running south of Svalbard, in the Barents Sea and was conducted aboard the research vessel G. O. Sars. My work aboard the G. O. Sars focused on the Mud Star Ctenodiscus crispatus, which can be found throughout the muddy sediments of the Barents Sea.

These little stars are important as they burrow down into the mud, helping to oxygenate the sediment and stimulating microbial growth, which contributes to nutrient cycling and release.  They also feed on the organic matter present within the mud, hence the name Mud Star.

I am interested in how mud Stars from different areas behave in terms of their bioturbation (how they burrow and mix sediments) and how they vary in terms of their reproduction. As part of this cruise I have been running onboard experiments to see whether Mud Stars from 2 different regions (one south of the polar front and one on the polar front) vary in their bioturbation.

To do this I kept the stars in little aquaria, partly filled with mud. Each set of aquaria is kept at the corresponding water temperature to where we collected the mud stars. To track their movement, I used coloured particle tracers called ‘luminophores’, which I placed over the surface of the mud in a 2-3mm layer. I then left the animals for 5 days to go about their business.

I then photographed the sediment under ultra-violet light. This makes the luminophore particles fluoresce so they can be easily identified compared to the surrounding sediment by an automatic computer program and the number of luminophore pixels per sediment depth calculated.

Now that I am back in the UK, I am working in the lab to investigate whether there are any differences in the reproduction of the mud stars from the two different areas. I will then analyse their population genetics to see whether any differences are due to short term individual adaptation, or long term genetic variation.

The post In a Sea of Stars appeared first on Exploring our Oceans .

Welcome everyone to the summer run of the MOOC, I hope you are all enjoying the course so far. As a facilitator I enjoy reading your comments and seeing what new elements you bring to the discussion – keep it up. I wanted to share with you my adventure out of the office last Tuesday. I had a great pleasure of working in the Molluscan Collection at the Natural History Museum in London, and the opportunity to look round the newly reopened Hintze Hall featuring ‘Hope’ the blue whale which is now suspended from the ceiling.

I have been working with limpets for many years now, see my blog post on my love of limpets and other days spent delving in the underground Molluscan Collection. This trip Rebecca and I spent the day working in the collection measuring historical samples from the British Isles. We were looking at Gibbula Cineraria and a species which has changed name in recent years, the Lined Top Shell which I have always known as Osilinus lineatus owing to genetic studies has been renamed Phorcus lineatus.

We managed to collect a good data from the collection but the hunt wasn’t going well at times, we had boxes of samples which bore no dates of collection or names of areas. Some labels simply stated ‘British?’ it’s soul destroying when we find inaccurately labelled samples. I tell our students repeatedly, write everything down in triplicate. Inside the bag, on the outside of the bag and on a separate bit of tracing paper, use a pencil not a pen!!! All manner of permanent marker pens are available but they shouldn’t be used for science.

The reason we use pencils and not pens,  is that the humble pencil can always be trusted. It won’t let you down. A pencil mark will withstand water, time and alcohol! Some of the specimens we were examining are almost 200 years old. It is true that during the Apollo missions NASA spent a million pounds developing an anti-gravity pen and the Russian cosmonauts took a pencil! NASA sell them in the gift shop, I’m sure they have more than made their investment back in income by now.

As well as collecting data on the shells, we like to research the collectors as well. The same names and hand writing will crop up time and time again. Some scrawls are much easier to read than others. The labels are always on tiny bits of paper in minuscule handwriting.  We were lucky enough to find in the drawer we were working on,  a type specimen from Lowe. A type specimen is the very specimen that the description of that species is written about. It’s also the very first sample to be formally named and it will be stored in a red box. Richard Thomas Lowe (1802-1874) was an English scientist, botanist, Ichthyologist, malacologist and a clergyman. He formally classified and named a large number of species during his time. His samples to this day are beautifully labelled and contain a lot of ancillary information.

At lunch time we got to escape back above ground and enjoy the museum as visitors and scientists. Over the last few months it has been all change in the Hintze Hall, with Dippy the Dinosaur bidding farewell and the hall being shut for renovation and installation of Hope. It’s not the end for Dippy, he’s going on tour for the next two years! If you are able to see him I highly recommend it.  Hope is a 13 year old Blue whale Balaenoptera musculus who got stranded in Wexford harbour, Ireland in 1891 and her skeleton was purchased by the museum and displayed in the Mammal hall in 1934.

Why is she called Hope? This whale is a symbol of hope, a powerful image to remind us all that humanity has the power to shape a sustainable future. The Blue Whale was almost hunted to extinction but numbers are slowly increasing thanks to the global hunting ban, but the species is still in danger from ship strikes and global warming.

If you are in the UK and have access to iplayer, the Horizon team created a wonderful documentary on the installation of Hope. It’s available online until the 17^th of August.

If you get the chance to visit the museum in London, I highly recommend it. I will be visiting Dippy one more time when he is on tour.

I welcome Hope and the future marine biologists she inspires.

Moira

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My lovely limpy, limpy do da’s – that’s the limpet song which can be heard being sung on rocky shores up and down the country by people dressed in rubber! Its a glamorous  job. Who knew when I started out in marine biology that the humble limpet (Patella) would become my obsession.

Limpets really are the prefect animal to study, there easy to find, they don’t put up much of a fight and they can be used as a proxy for the health of the larger ecosystem. For the last 6 years I have been involved in a project where we look at three species of limpet – Patella depressa, Patella vulgata and Patella ulyssiponensis. Every month we collect samples and then we dissect them to asses the fecundity of the gonad. We’re monitoring how the fecundity  of species changes throughout the year and between years. We then go on to look at whether the climate has had an impact of the reproductive output of the species.

Last week I had the honour of visiting the molluscan collection in the bowels of the Natural History Museum. This was the best day in the office of my entire career! I spent the day helping to measure historic Dog whelks (Nucella lapillus) but I did manage to spend some time looking through the drawers. Also the blue whale of limpets, just happened to be resting on top of a cupboard (its too big to fit inside!) May I introduce Scutellastra Mexicana, the Giant Mexican Limpet, size range 50mm – 260mm, it was once thought to be extinct, but small pockets of individuals have been found in remote areas.

Next time you find yourself on the shore, spare a thought for the humble, often over looked limpet. They really are the most amazing little creatures.

The post Limpets – My Favourite! appeared first on Exploring our Oceans .

It all began way back in 2004 when I took up a place to Study a BSc in Marine Biology at the University of Aberdeen. Once I finished my studies I went to work for the Majestic Line as a Wildlife Guide/Bosun. I sailed around the west coast of Scotland for a year or so, saw some wonderful sights.

I then moved south of the boarder to take up a place at the University of Southampton on the Oceanography MSc Programme – little did I know then that I would still be here 8 years later. While I was studying for my masters, I decided that I would like to stay within the department once my studies were over. Therefore I needed to find a job! It wasn’t easy but I managed to convince a few people to take me on part-time to make up a full time role. I spend half my time working as crew on the University’s Research Vessel Callista and the rest of the week working for the SERPENT Project.  I was a video analyst at SERPENT, I would spend most of may day cataloguing species from footage around the world. My favourite entry was this Pyrosoma found off the coast of Angola.

Then a different job as research Assistant came up within the department working with Professor Steven Hawkins. I then went from deep sea cataloguing to Rocky shore ecology. My entire working life was centred around the tide timetable – frequent 4am starts but it was a huge amount of fun and for me a personal honour to be traversing the coasts of the UK counting and monitoring all that could be found or not found as the case maybe.

                                                          Limpet survey in the Isle of Man.

After this post came to end, I was lucky enough to secure permanent employment within the department. I am now a Research Technician – which is a simply a job title and doesn’t really explain my wonderfully crazy job. I love working within Ocean and Earth Science, I’m not sure where I really begin to describe what I do. This week for example I am busy trying to organize a sea survival course on Thursday I’ll be off to the Natural History Museum to measure historic limpets. Tomorrow I will be briefing our first years on the upcoming Easter Field Course. In the interest of brevity I shall stop here.  I have a few more blog posts to write about my current role which will give you a better insight into the department.

Cheers

Moira

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I think it was fairly inevitable that I would end up working in the marine sector. From an early age I have been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time at sea. Being the only daughter of a fisherman and therefore cheap and easy labour, my dad had me out on the boat as much as possible. It was great fun as a child and it wasn’t until I had finished my degree that I appreciated how scientifically my father approached his work.

Now fast forward to 2017 I am a Research Technician within Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton. Over the years I have worked on a variety of different projects which have ranged from deep-sea research to rocky shore ecology. At the moment my work is mainly focused on Limpets. I have had the pleasure of seeing the sea virtually every day of my life, I grew up on Benbecula in the Western Isles, moved to Aberdeen for University and then settled here in the South Coast. For me the ocean is everything, my heritage, my livelihood and our very existence. I cannot begin to explain how much it means to me with three photographs. I hope you enjoy the MOOC and I look forward to being one of the facilitators.

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