From 17-25 November 2018, researchers of Wageningen Marine Research and other institutes will work together on reef monitoring on the largest coral reef of the Netherlands near Saba. The Saba Bank is an extremely rich area with very high biodiversity of fish, coral, algae and sponges.
For more on our previous expeditions, please take a look at http://expeditiesababank.blogspot.com/.
Day 6. Back in Sint Maarten Friday 23 November. We are back in Sint Maarten. It was a terrific expedition, a great group of people and a fantastic crew on board of the Caribbean Explorer II. Sarah, Brett, and Kirsten the divers from the Explorer accompanied each group on every…
Day 6. Wild days Wild days on the Saba Bank. Things you take for granted on land, are such complexities on a ship rocking on the grand Sababankian waves. Place a cup on the table – wooosh, it’ll go flying if you don’t hold on to it. Same for plates…
Day 5. Sunny side up In the distance we see only some lights from Statia and Saba and beyond that, the light of the moon, the stars and the sound of the waves crashing on the Caribbean Explorer II. While we spent the last few nights near Saba, we will…
Day 4 The team has reached the fourth day of the expedition, and we are all going strong with the data collection for the Saba Bank. Through rough weather, high waves, currents, rain and strong gusts of wind, it does not hold us back to the dives to collect data….
Day 3. Counting fish We are ready to start diving with our group of eight scientists plus dive instructor Kirstin. At the diving deck we are queuing up with our regulators and fins in hand. Then the captain gives a sign and we jump into the water at a rapid…
Crossing to first spot As I write this blog, the mobile phones are flying away and I have to stop my laptop not to fall down from the table. We spent the night in the lee of the island of Saba and are now on our way to the first…
Today everybody is arriving in Sint Maarten. Excitement is building up. For half of the 17 researchers this is not the first time on the Caribbean Explorer II, which is good for me, they’ll know the drill. The airport in Sint Maarten is still not fully rebuilt since it was…
Header image: Saba Bank during our expedition in 2015 (photo: David Stevens). We (Lisa Becking, Tobia de Scisciolo, and me) are ahead of the rest of the team to try out techniques that we want to use on the Saba Bank and to refresh contacts with our coral restoration project…