Life Beyond the Beaker

I was super excited to be asked to speak to Sky News about climate change and what projects I have been involved with at SAMS and BAS to try and work out what is actually changing with our climate and how it is going to affect our marine world and how we use it sustainably. Here are some of the things I spoke about, you can see it live in the New Year. Why do I/we study the oceans? The facts?! Oceans cover 71% of the planet and make up 95% of space available to life and these oceans are our support system and the lungs of our planet. The oceans produce all of the oxygen we breathe, from animals like phytoplankton through photosynthesis.  The ocean provides us with a place to exercise, socialise, and provides free goods and services, the food we eat, and the oxygen we breathe. Not only that, but the oceans also regulate the global climate, mediate temperatures, and drive the weather systems that we plan our short weekends by. Our climate can determine when we get massive rainfall, d...

Ghost fishing is a modern issue of today. The reason I decided to talk about it in my blog is that I wanted to learn more about it, as on the DY120 research cruise in October, we had one oceanographic mooring that had a massive tuna longline attached to it.  Ghost fishing  is when derelict fishing gear 'continues to fish. Climate change is aggravated by impacts from overfishing, pollution, and habitat degradation...all of which ghost fishing plays a part.  As the oceanographic mooring was rolled in over the back of the Discovery a massive longline was found to be attached to it. Read here for what a deep-sea mooring is!  It is not able to go through the block to winch it onboard, so each section needed to be cut off with a knife. This added at least 1.5 hours to the operation, we had a tight schedule this year with timing and weather so delays were pretty stressful.  So what is ghost fishing?  https://www.ghostfishing.co.uk/  explain ghost fishing as, ...

After the research cruise in October, I spent two weeks cramming for my Yachtmaster Coastal skipper exam. I was awarded a scholarship from Trinity House and the RYA last year to do all of this training!  I spent 4 long days getting used to Bold Ranger, a Nelson 42 owned by James at https://hebrideanseaschool.com/ These blue sheets across the windows are to represent fog. We practiced our blind nav using just speed, distance, time, and using radar.  These are all of the things that we get tested on in 1.5 days and need to know off by heart and be competent! It is a big scary list, however, over the years I have been building this up so it was great to actually test my knowledge and skill!  International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea Questions will be confined to the International Regulations and although candidates must be aware of the existence of Local Regulations, they will not be expected to memorise s...

The internet connection on the Discovery was intermittent, so here are a few blogs that I wrote whilst onboard and also from a few friends about their perspective about what we got up to. I wanted to begin by explaining what a mooring is, as that is a large part of the OSNAP science program that we were on board to help with. In the last blog, Sam explained why we were bobbing around the Atlantic and explained what a mooring is, I want to explain how we recover and deploy one of these moorings.  This incredible photo of Pilot whales dancing through the waves was taken by Lewis Drysdale.  We went from Southampton up and across to the from east to west along the line of moorings, as we went along we did a CTD (see two blogs previous), then a mooring recovery and deployment with a few ARGO floats dropped in along the way. A mooring is, as Sam Jo nes explains, " Each mooring consists of tens of instruments distributed along a wire, which is anchored to the seabed and kept vertical...