I arrived at the harbor at 8 am on the 18th of January. A post-doc student and me were the first ones to board the ship (except for the staff) so we took the chance to go straight to our cabins and organize our stuff. I have to say that I felt slightly insecure and unsure of what to do as I didn’t know anybody. Once I had put everything away, I went to the common room and chatted with a few researchers from the IMR, until my thesis supervisor came onboard and we got a tour of the lab we would be working in. We stowed all equipment away and tried to organize it as best as possible. At 10 we had the introductory meeting with everyone where we learned the safety procedures and got a tour of the boat. This was followed by lunch. At around 13 we finally started steaming. Sadly, the next two days the weather conditions did not allow us to deploy any nets, as the waves would have damaged them. So we spent our days talking, eating and trying to get some reading done for the courses back home.
The first trawls we managed to set out were a bit disappointing for me as we didn’t find any parasitized velvet-belly sharks. The next were more promising, we found five sharks with parasites. We brought these up to “our” lab to analyze them. We firstly took the size, sex and weight of the shark. Then we removed the eggs from the parasites mantle cavity and placed them in seawater in the hope that they will survive until we can bring them back to Bergen and work with the hatched larvae. I then cut out sections with the parasite from the shark placing them in 70% ethanol at 4 degrees. And finally, we froze the sharks. Ideally, we would also have wanted to measure the parasites root system and thorax properly but the movement of the boat made the proper dissection and subsequently the exact measuring very difficult, so this will be something we will be working on later on land.
Sadly, we have now had to dock at a harbor sue to unforeseen circumstances. Since there is also a storm approaching, we took the opportunity to stay docked to let it pass, as it would not only be unpleasant for, but also “useless” as we would not be able to set out the nets. I have to say that for now I do enjoy the work. I was a bit demotivated at the start as everything was very chaotic and we got no sharks with parasites for me to work with. Furthermore, in my shift there are three researchers from the IMR, who are very efficient in their work so sometimes it feels as I am just standing in the way. My personal moments so far are when the trawls come in and all contents are sent down from the deck to the lab. Everything comes down pouring onto the «conveyer belt» and the sorting of the fish begins. We separate the shrimps from any other fish, then the sharks are placed in their own box, and finally any other big fish is separated according to the species for later dissection.
