As we prepared to start our first fishing expedition it was quickly discovered that the winch that is used to haul up the trawling nets was broken. After many hours of troubleshooting it was discovered that a ball bearing had been shredded due to a faulty oil pump.
Mike and Fernando discuss what needs to be done on the broken winch. They spent a long time yesterday working to determine the problem. It turned out to be a shredded ball bearing.
This was definitely cause for concern as the icefishes live on the bottom of the sea floor and expend very little energy. So if you want to catch them - trawling is the way to go. Hopefully the winch can be repaired when the LMG goes back to Chile. In the meantime, we put down the fish pots.
The fish pots are all set up and ready to go. Four pots are connected to a long tether. Their location is identified by a flashing beacon and two bright orange buoys
They are large wire structures with netting that allows a fish to come into the side but not out. You can check in, but you can't check out! They are lured in by a bag of bait - fish chopped up just how they like it.
This is a fish pot. You can see the black bag with bait inside. The bait lures the fish in but sadly no meals are served once inside.
These are the buoys. If you look on the right side of the picture you can see the beacon.
Safety is taken very seriously - there is a short safety circle before each deployment of the pots or bringing them back up.
Before each job out on the deck we have a safety meeting. This one ended with a little gibby dance instead of the usual pep cheer.
The 'Gibby' dance refers to the Notothenia gibberifrons. Very cool looking fish with big eyes and fleshy lips. If you look closely at the pictures, anyone inside the yellow box is wearing a safety belt and line connected to the deck. Should you get washed overboard, we can get you back in.
The team has just pulled up a fish pot where we will quickly get the fish that we need out and into an aquarium. The lucky unwanted fish go back into the waters. Sometimes it's good to be unpopular.
Once the fish are taken out of the pots we rush them into the aquarium. Today we were collecting only Notothenia gibberfrons and Notothenia corriceps - both red blooded fishes.
As soon as the pots come up the crew swings into action to get the fish back into water.
We have our own version of Madrid's running with the bulls celebration. We run with the fishes. This is a corriceps that I am holding. We caught quite a few of these fish.
When the winch is back up and running then we can catch some icefishes. Be sure to stay tuned. I'm putting together an exciting video on today's catch. We had lots of local visitors and onlookers from the area.