I recently participated in the ICES Deep-sea Symposium on the island of Faial in the Azores. This 4 day meeting ran from 27-30 April and included delegates from all over the world, presenting on subjects from mining to ecology of many deep-sea habitats.

The conference was headed: “Issues confronting the deep oceans: the economic, scientific and governance challenges and oppotuinites of working in the deep sea”. I was invited to present in a special session chaired by Jeff Ardron and Liz McLanahan entitled “Linking deep sea science to international decisions: Vulnerable and ecologically significant areas”.

My presentation was “Predicting the distribution of framework forming corals” and included updates on my new modelling processes and more importantly a new suite of environmental variables at a 30 arc second resolution (1 km). The presentation is available for viewing by clicking below. If you have any questions, or are interested in collaborating don’t hesitate to contact me.

Download the presentation here: Davies et al 2009 ICES presentation (458)

During June/July 2008, I was once again privilaged to join my Dutch colleagues on the RV Pelagia, a magnificent research ship from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. The cruise yielded a huge area of multibeam bathymetry, physical oceanography and insights into the biodiversity of the area.

One particularly notable attempt was to quantify and identify the fish community in the area, the water depth is nearly 1000 m. We used a timed bait release system mounted on the ALBEX lander and attached a new SAMS infra-red camera.

The results were pretty good. You can see a sneak preview below: