Today was a very exciting time for ‘team SPI’. Silvana and Nigel from CEFAS managed to collect their first deep-water SPI images. We saw some nice Crinoids, sponges, stony corals and erect polychaete tubes. So, we will continue with our SPI transects during the cruise.
The Sediment Profile Imagery (SPI) is an in-situ technique, which takes vertical profile pictures of the upper 20cm of soft sediments. The images can provide clear insight into the relationship between fauna and their Habitat. This information is very important for our scientific work, since we can now begin to understand some of the existing biodiversity and function (e.g. bioturbation) of the communities adjacent to Lophelia pertusa (cold-water coral reefs) at Mingulay.
We will be able to integrate this data as baseline information to understand the potential effects caused by ocean acidification on these systems.
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