News

MAREANO video footage crossing a long, elongated cliff north of Varangerhalvøya has shown the presence of irregular holes in the seabed. Strange white features occur at the bottom of the holes and in two larger depressions.

One unexpected finding as MAREANO completed data collection along the Finnmark coast has been the presence of shell sand at more than three hundred metres water depth, off Nordkapp.

Cruise diary: This week marks the start of the third and last MAREANO cruise in 2014. Onboard R/V G.O. Sars, we find 16 enthusiastic researchers and technicians who are all ready to examine the seafloor of the Finnmark coast and the SE Norwegian part of the Barents Sea.

Over the past five years MAREANO has conducted several mapping cruises along the coast of Finnmark. Starting in August 2014, the third and final MAREANO cruise of the year will map the remaining areas in the coastal belt, focusing on areas north of Sørøya, Magerøya and Nordkinnhalvøya.

The MAREANO cruise was undertaken to survey the sea floor at Storegga, Norwegian Sea. In order to achieve this we took a multitude of video stations coupled with a few beam trawls, RP nets, grabs and cores.

Last autumn MAREANO scientists documented the geology and biology of the southern part of Storegga, which lies at the edge of the continental shelf in mid-Norway. Now we are back to complete the journey through this fascinating underwater landscape, armed with new multibeam data that complete the picture of the terrain on the shelf.

A more updated look and easier navigation is the most visible changes in the new map service on www.mareano.no. With a few keystrokes, you can create your own maps based on interest.

VIDEO: During the MAREANO-survey April 13–26 a large number of king crabs were observed at about 40 m depth just off the village Berlevåg in the northernmost Norwegian county Finnmark. It is well-known that the king crab thrive in this area and was on its way towards deeper waters after a short trip to quite shallow depths where hatching, spawning and mating take place at this time of the year.

Cruise diary: Sunday April 13 at 13.30 we left Tromsø and have since conducted 26 video transects and six
sampling stations, where a suite of gears is used.

Toktdagbok: Søndag 13. april kl. 13.30 la ”G.O. Sars” fra kai i Tromsø i et utrolig vakkert vær. Vår første stasjon var rett nord for Sørøya. Vi startet med videoopptak på 200 meters dyp ved midnatt, og observerte sandbunn med mye grus og stein hvor bunnforhold og bunndyr var lite variert.

In its tenth year, MAREANO is to survey both the Norwegian and the Barents Sea. Bathymetric measurements in the Barents Sea have been undergoing since January along the Russian-Norwegian border while the 2014 start-up in the Norwegian Sea took place in March. The biological, geological and chemical sampling will start on April 13 off the coast of Finnmark and in the south-eastern part of the Barents Sea, and on June 16 in the Norwegian Sea, northeast of Mørebankene.

Video footage acquired during MAREANOs latest cruise at Skoldryggen has revealed why the inside of pockmarks at 440 m depth on the seabed appear harder than the surrounding seabed, when seen on multibeam backscatter images. Carbonate crusts have been found at the bottom of the pockmarks (Figure 1).

Once again, a polychaete species has been discovered in samples from a MAREANO survey. The new species has been named Scalibregma hanseni and was collected in subzero temperatures at 765 meter depth from the continental slope in the Norwegian Sea.

A biotope map for the Norwegian Sea based on video data from MAREANO 2012 is now available on www.mareano.no. Biotopes are regions with similar communities of animals living on the seabed, in a similar physical environment. Maps such as these, which bring together the physical and biological attributes of the seabed, can provide particularly valuable information for sustainable management.

MAREANO scientists have now produced a biotope map for the Nordland VI area in Northern Norway. "Biotope" is a term used to describe the main biological communities and the physical environment they inhabit.  MAREANO video data were to determine the biological communities and this information was put together with bathymetry, terrain and geological data to model the overall distribution of biotopes.

You'll never have seen anything like this before! A small bristle worm, just a few centimetres long, suddenly decides to withdraw into its house, closing the door tightly behind it.

The small crustacean Neohela monstrosa waits patiently in its cave for small animals to pass, so that it can pounce on them and eat them. In the video you can see what happened to a krill that decided to take a breather right outside the cave.

Cruise diary: MAREANO is currently mapping the southern part of Storegga, along the shelf edge and slope areas where a series of underwater landslides have occurred, most recently the famous Storegga slide, which dramatically altered the underwater landscape here some 8200 years ago.

The last piece of the bottom areas on and around Mørebankene are now surveyed by MAREANO after two weeks work aboard the research ship G.O. Sars (see sampling stations in the map below). A varying benthic fauna living within old avalanches and on plains has been videotaped and sampled. The rate is now set for the waters off the coastline from Kristiansund to Haltenbanken.

Cruise diary: On Sunday 22nd September the research vessel G.O. Sars sailed from Kristiansund to begin MAREANO's third cruise in 2013. During this cruise several areas off the coast of Møre and Trøndelag in mid-Norway will be documented using underwater video and various equipment for sampling the seabed.

Two new areas with high concentrations of seapens have been documented in the Barents Sea, near the coast of the county of Finnmark. Once we have analysed our videos of these areas, we will know whether the concentrations are high enough for both areas to be defined as vulnerable under the international OSPAR Convention. The videos were taken during the expedition that we completed in August.

Cruise diary: The MAREANO project has mapped one of the most bountiful parts of the Barents Sea, finding that the sea bottom is covered in iceberg plough marks from the last ice age, large rocks, pockmarks and a multitude of trawl marks. The latter reflect the large quantities of shrimp and fish harvested by the fishing fleet from this highly productive area.

The Nordic Marine Science Conference 2013 will be held 28th - 30th October in Oslo, Norway, with the title "Marine ecosystems in a changing environment". There will be a strong focus on the effects of climate change - both in the physical environment and on the ecosystems. These topics are getting increasingly important in MAREANO.

Cruise diary: The bivalve expert, Dr. Graham Oliver from the National Museum of Wales, is on his second cruise with the MAREANO programme aboard the G.O. Sars. He is continuing to build a library of DNA samples of the bivalve “Thyasiridae”.

Cruise diary: Good weather means that the MAREANO expedition is now ahead of schedule, and all of the programmed sites have been surveyed. The “G.O. Sars” has therefore set sail for the coast of the county of Finnmark (the “Finnmark East” area), in order to survey some additional sites there on the last days of the expedition.

The ongoing MAREANO cruise has collected sediment samples from 12 000 km² of the Barents Sea, along the Russian border. The sampled area stretches 400 km north of the coast of Finnmark. With fine weather and a good working effort, samples have been collected at all planned stations.

MAREANO is well into its 2013 Barents Sea cruise. We have just finished our work on Tiddlybanken, where one of the video lines was planned to cross a previously described gas leakage site. The gas leakage was found as well as other exiting structures on the seabed.

Cruise diary: Approximately 120 sea miles north of Vardø (coast of Finnmark), at depths between 210-350 meters, the MAREANO survey recorded a muddy seabed with cobbles and boulders that were covered by sea anemones.

The second MAREANO cruise in 2013 maps the seabed along the Russian border in the Barents Sea. Over large parts of the Barents Sea, the seabed is full of pockmarks. The processes that create pockmarks are important for both fauna and climate, and the ongoing MAREANO cruise will provide data that will contribute to resolving questions related to these.

Cruise diary: MAREANO often writes cruise-reports about all the beautiful and exciting things we observe with out video-rig. This is of course a very important part of the MAREANO-programme, and much of our cruise-time is allocated to filming our videolines. These data are the backbone in our descriptions of nature types, and they are the basis for our maps (e.g. maps of vulnerable nature types). But don’t believe that all we do on a cruise is to sit in the dark videoroom watching the sea-floor. We sample using quite a lot of other methods as well!