Day 6
Flores island
We have been very lucky with the weather and today is World Ocean Day.
The Expedition Leaders Emanuel Gonçalves, from the Oceano Azul Foundation and Paul Rose from the National Geographic | Pristine Seas were aboard to welcome students from the Lajes das Flores Primary School and showed them all about the field work of the different teams. It was amazing to receive them on board. The little “Florentinos” also had the opportunity to visit the ship Santa Maria Manuela and get to know all about it past in the seas of Newfoundland.
In the afternoon, one of the DOP-UAz teams went to “Ilhéu de Monchique”, in the western part of the island, to try to find mako sharks (Isurus oxyrhincus) and blue sharks (Prionace glauca) for tagging work but without success.
The other team of the DOP-UAz dropped three baited cameras, at depths of 50, 110 and 170m, to watch the diversity and abundance of fish. Morey-eels, a Mediterranean starry ray and a redscorpion fish took a bait snack.
Photographers Nuno Sá and Manu San Félix spotted one of the strangest and most dazzling sea creatures, the blue dragon (Glaucus atlanticus). This species of sea slug is a voracious predator of the Portuguese Man o’ War and it is very common to find them associated.
Day 7
Flores island
Today the teams performed several dives in different locations and once again the tagging team tried to find blue sharks to capture at least one. Again without success.
At Pedra do Espirito Santo, four miles from the Southwest Coast, a dive surrounded by almaco jacks was amazing and observed several species such as the red scorpion-fish or pink-striped jellyfish.
Photos 3 to 9 by Joe Lepore
Photo 10 by Paul Robson
Photo 12 by Manu San Félix
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