BBQ and the blues upon the river Tyne

Saturday 13 July, 13:30, we finished the second of the two longest transects of this survey and headed for a stop in Newcastle. While we sail upon the river Tyne towards Newcastle, we meet an old acquaintance: "our" own ferry which we see daily in IJmuiden where our department of IMARES is located.

The DFDS ferry Newcastle - IJmuiden

Kittiwakes in Newcastle build their nests in windows, on bridges, roofs etc. During our stay, we can hear them all the time. The sound these birds make is supposed to be "kittiwake", but I am not sure whether everyone agrees on this.

Nests of Kittiwakes in the ridges of these factory buildings.

Saturday evening part of the scientific crew went to the pub, studying local ales, stout and cider brands: research is deeply settled in our genes! In the pub we met Tim and Jenny from Birmingham and Newcastle respectively (Tim is Dutch!). Immediately they were invited for our barbeque the next day. Fortunately the weather was beautiful!!!

From left to right: Arie (engineer), Dirk (our man from Havana), Sascha, Jenny and Tim

Overview of the barbeque on the front deck of Tridens.

 After the BBQ we went to the Tyne bar, where the yearly blues festival was going on.

The blues festival at the Tyne Bar was attended by some mysterious looking persons (sea uttermost to the right: Che Guevara??)

 Newcastle is relatively bike-friendly. Like in the Netherlands there are special parking lots for bikes. The difference with the Netherlands is that in Britain, a special P-sign with a bike-icon is required in order to let people know what these steel things are meant for!

Parking spot for bikes.

The Lyndon Anderson Band at the Tyne's bar blues festival.

 O yes, fisheries research: Monday morning we left Newcastle to start on the 55.25 N transect in eastern direction. Just east of the Farn Deeps, we shot the net for these interesting mark on the echogram. They were much stronger on the higher freqencies than on the 38 kHz, indicating that this may be something without a swimbladder. The catch revealed large quantities of Northern Krill (Meganyctiphanes norvegicus), some whiting, on specimen of sprat and some very small (2-4cm) norway pout and cod.

 

Northern Krill (Meganyctiphanes norvegicus) and whiting.

Northern Krill is an important food species for a lot of fish species, birds and cetaceans.

Meanwhile on board, in our hydro acoustic room a butterfly was caught in the light of the window. As we are working on our ecological profile continuously, we looked up the species and made a record here: Ringlet (Aphantopus hyperantus), in Dutch "Koevinkje".

Ringlet or (in Dutch) "Koevinkje"

Tomorrow we hope to encounter again some herring.