{"id":151,"date":"2014-08-25T16:42:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T14:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/?p=151"},"modified":"2014-08-25T16:52:26","modified_gmt":"2014-08-25T14:52:26","slug":"riffdoku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/riffdoku\/","title":{"rendered":"Documenting the reef \/ Riff-Doku"},"content":{"rendered":"

Documenting the reef
\n<\/strong>(deutsche Version unten)<\/p>\n

The aim of my dive was to collect video material of the reef top to document occurrences of corals, sponges and other organisms as part of my PhD work. This may sound like a simple task. But at this reef we\u2019ve encountered very strong currents that often made dives to the reef top impossible. During one of last year\u2019s dives JAGO pilot J\u00fcrgen Schauer and I were stuck in the coral rubble area for a couple of hours and couldn\u2019t move upslope towards the reef due to currents coming down at JAGO like a waterfall.<\/p>\n

Asking for our position after descending to the seafloor this time, we had to realize that the currents moved us some 100 meters away from the reef. We were half expecting to watch the sediment in front of the window for the next hours – but not this time. As predicted by tidal charts the currents weakened quickly and we could approach the reef without any difficulties. When we reached the reef top there was nearly no water movement. We were able to document massive living Lophelia blocks resembling enormous cauliflowers \u2013 in white and orange. Large sponge communities were sitting on top of the reef and some huge soft corals where thriving between the Lophelia colonies.\u00a0 Due to a perfectly working navigation system and little water movement we were able to cross the reef at a slow speed, collecting amazing video footage of the whole reef top. This dive was scientifically and personally a unique experience.<\/p>\n

Swaantje Bennecke<\/p>\n

\"Swaantje<\/a>

Swaantje and J\u00fcrgen scan the reeftop. Photo: Swaantje Bennecke, GEOMAR<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Riff-Doku<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ziel meines Tauchgangs war es, Korallen, Schw\u00e4mme und andere Organismen auf dem Riffdach f\u00fcr meine Doktorarbeit zu dokumentieren. Das klingt zun\u00e4chst nach einer einfachen Aufgabe. Doch an diesem Riff gibt es starke Str\u00f6mungen, vor denen es auf dem Riffdach keinen Schutz gibt. W\u00e4hrend eines Tauchgangs im vergangenen Jahr sa\u00dfen JAGO-Pilot J\u00fcrgen Schauer und ich mehrere Stunden unterhalb des Riffes im Sediment fest, weil wasserfallartige Str\u00f6mungen von oben ein Weiterkommen unm\u00f6glich machten.<\/p>\n

Als wir diesmal nach Abstieg in die Tiefe bei der Landung am Boden unsere Position abfragten und die Botschaft bekamen, einige hundert Meter verdriftet worden zu sein, malten J\u00fcrgen und ich uns wieder muntere Stunden im Tiefseesediment aus. Doch dieses Mal kam es anders. Wie von Gezeitentabellen f\u00fcr diese Region vorhergesagt, nahmen die Str\u00f6mungen w\u00e4hrend des Tauchgangs schnell ab. So konnten wir ohne gro\u00dfe Umwege ans Riff gelangen. Ganz oben bot sich uns ein gro\u00dfartiger Ausblick auf riesige Lophelia-Ansammlungen, die wie massiver Blumenkohl dort wachsen.<\/p>\n

Neben den wei\u00dfen Kolonien konnten wir auch einige orangefarbene Korallenbl\u00f6cke dokumentieren, die zusammen mit gro\u00dfen rosafarbenen Weichkorallen und gelben Schw\u00e4mmen f\u00fcr ein paar Farbtupfer sorgen. Da sowohl die Tauchboot-Navigation als auch die Str\u00f6mungen in unserem Sinne arbeiteten, war es m\u00f6glich, bei langsamer Geschwindigkeit fantastisches Videomaterial des Riffdaches zu sammeln. Dieser Tauchgang war wissenschaftlich und pers\u00f6nlich ein einmaliges Erlebnis.<\/p>\n

Swaantje Bennecke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Documenting the reef (deutsche Version unten) The aim of my dive was to collect video material of the reef top to document occurrences of corals, sponges and other organisms as part of my PhD work. This may sound like a simple task. But at this reef we\u2019ve encountered very strong currents that often made dives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/pos473\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}