There was a nice ice breaking / housewarming party yesterday in our house with a lot of happy people, though not everybody was in the best mood first, because the experiment did not start yet. So a lot of people decided to leave today and come back when everything looks better…

Driving the buster is fun

So what did we do besides saying farewell because the so called core-group including the divers will stay.

We went out to check the ice conditions at the mesocosms, the Buster proved to be even better for this use than the Wassermann, so we had the fun to break the ice, a person can easily stand on it.

some weight is needed

A little bit surprising is that people can also stand on a mesocosmos…to be correct it was four: Lenni, Jan C, Matze and Tim

There is no decision yet but it would be an elegant way to save the mesocosms from damage by the ice, just by setting them a few meters under the water surface with additional weights, lets see what happens the next days

Lenni and Gwen fishing for cod

In the afternoon we went fishing for cod. We need them for the experiments on the impact of ocean acidification on adult cod, their incubated eggs and the hatched larvae. But small females only give a few eggs with poor quality. So the idea was to get them via hook and line because the cages cannot be put out due to the ice. It was still a lovely day, wonderful wind, quite some current, we found nice spots, but seemed like not from cods point of view, only a small whiting and a shorthorn sculpin, poor catch.