From: Allice Stuart-Menteth
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 18:05
Subject: Job done, on our way back

It's been a hard week! No time to write - sorry about that. Anyway I've finally got some time to write, now that we have finished and are heading back.

We've spent a lot of time scraping barnacles off the old buoy. Space where animals or plants can settle and grow are in short supply in the ocean, so buoys like the hulls of ships get a cover of living organisms. Removing these can be quite difficult, and we certainly had to work hard to scrape the barnacles off the old buoy.

Ships and boats sometimes use antifouling paint to prevent organisms settling on the hull and slowing them down. Unfortunately the paints can have adverse effects on the environment, where there is a lot of boat traffic.

Our buoy was obviously welcome - they were covered in Goose Barnacles. They are common in warm seas, and in some areas they are considered a delicacy!

Barnacles feed by filtering tiny particles from the water. The limp limbs you can just see inside the shells spread out like fans in the water.

Barnacles are crustaceans - the same group of animals as crabs. As larvae they drift around the sea. When they turn into adults, they settle on rocks or any other hard surface they can find - some species of barnacles even grow on whales!

Before we left we deployed the new buoy and moorings. A mooring is a line of instruments that measure things like temperature, salinity, and the speed of currents. It is anchored to the sea floor with a heavy weight, and held upright in the water by lots of glass floats like the yellow spheres you see in the photo below.

It's not just been hard work, though. We've had some time off. And some even had time to catch fish for supper.

Off to my bunk now,
Alice

Photos:   Cleaning the old buoy   Goose Barnacles   Deploying the new buoy   Glass floats   Mooring work   Fish for supper   Me on deck