I’m presently writing from the saloon of a
tall-ship, surrounded by glacial walls and mountains, having just jumped into
the icy waters of the Barents Sea. If 10-year old Dan could see 21-year old Dan
now, he’d be sitting in a very large puddle of excited urine.
I’ve been honoured to join the team of
‘Sail Against Plastic’ to contribute to the scientific research being carried
out here and help contribute towards the media content and output. It’s been a
fantastic experience bringing together everyone’s interests and skills to try
to better understand and convey the threats facing this brilliant wilderness.
It’s been devastating seeing the masses of plastic waste washed up on these
beaches apparently at the very end of the world, really brings the research we’ve
been reading and carrying out home. If you want to find out any more about this
expedition (you really do!), you can follow us here: https://www.sailagainstplastic.com/
Given the fact that I knew I’d be based
upon a tall ship for two weeks, it would have killed me not to have had the opportunity
to at least trying to cast a few lures. After locating my lost baggage after
much stress, we were out of the fjord of Longyearbyen into wilder waters. On
the first morning I took a punt in the icy crystal-clear water (clarity was
insane, like 4m!) and casted a 40g pink savage gear sandeel into the shallow
20m water below. Knowing that most of the teleost life would be benthic based,
I counted this down until the lure hit the bottom with a thud and then dragged
it against the stony bottom with short swings of the rod tip.
 |
| Look at those fins! Photography by Ben Porter. |
After 4 or 5 casts there was a quite an
increase in resistance, the line feeling much heavier than it had previously.
Thinking that I’d just hooked onto a rogue bit of kelp, I quickly reeled this
upwards to find a very optimistic scorpionfish having attach the lure almost as
big as itself! What a bizarre beast this was, just imagine the world that it
must live in within the icy water below us, with the water being below 0
degrees Celsius. To cope with these cold waters, many arctic species have
evolved novel antifreeze proteins, true specialists of the deep. Specialism
however comes at a cost; these extreme adaptations and lack of genetic
variation from strong selection means that these arctic specialists are
particularly sensitive to global warming- which in the Arctic is running at
about double the global average. The sea we’re sailing in now has 20 more weeks
of summer conditions annually than it did in the 70’s, and the Arctic is
predicted to be totally free of ice during summers by 2040. Sadly, as this ice
has retreated fisheries have pushed further north to exploit these fragile
ecosystems, with these species remaining largely unassessed in vulnerability.
So please, catch your own damn fish, or at
least check where they’re coming from.
