Today was another incredible sampling day here at Melchior Island. One of the highlights of today was that we deployed the Rauschert dredge not only in shallow water (20m), but also tried it for the first time in a deeper area (75m). The Rauschert dredge is a small sledge-like device that gets pulled for 5 min from the moving ship over the ocean floor to collect benthic fauna, whereupon it gets hauled up to the surface, and the collected organism get sorted. This is used to assess the biodiversity present on the ocean benthos, inaccessible to divers. The risk thereby is, that the dredge might get stuck on a large stone, leading to either damage or even loss of the device. However, we worked together well (as you can see in the picture), everything went smoothly and we were rewarded with a rich sample of organisms.
Tomorrow we will change to a different location… more updates then!
