
Bit of a drag
We blew the strobe light on our camera late day 2. While we re-soldered the connections, the ship changed tasks and brought out the trawl. The trawl collected fish, kelp, shrimps, and sea cucumbers from 410 m depth. We will use stable isotope measures from these animals and examine the community composition to explore the influence on drift kelp in these areas. Our trawl from the 'kelp area' was full of kelp (left) and our trawl from our 'no kelp control area' came up with a

Off the deep end
The WP3 team started day 1 of their 14 day research cruise. This part of the KELPEX project will look at the movement and influence of kelp on deep-sea communities. We boarded the UiT’s R/V Johan Ruud in Tromsø and headed out to Malangen. Our first goal: verify that kelp is actually present in our 400 m deep 'kelp area'. After some trial and error getting the Yo Yo camera up and running, we finally were able to take a look at the deepest part of the fjord. Although they had

10 out of 10
Well we did it! March field campaign was a wild ride. After being land locked for 3 days by winter storms the team pulled out an intense last afternoon and managed to collect the samples from the final 3 of 10 sites. We finished as the sun was setting and processed samples until 2 AM under the northern lights. It was cold and rough on the water, but worth it when the diving is this nice. Thanks to Malte and Nikolai for hauling anchors in hail storms, their excellent drop came