Final cruise report, Anton Bruun cruises 7, 8, 9

Abstract

Presented in this report are the reduced oceanographic, chemical, and biological data, station lists of plankton and benthic collections, and bathythermograph positions for Cruises 7 and 8 of the R/V ANTON BRUUN; and the station lists of reef and inshore, plankton, benthic, and miscellaneous biological collections, and bathythermograph positions for Cruise 9. Narrative reports of Cruises 7 and 8 were issued as News Bulletins No. 9 (Jan. 1965) and No. 10 (Feb. 1965), respectively, by the U. S. Program in Biology, IIOE. Cruises 7 and 8 were devoted primarily to benthic biology. On Cruise 7, which concentrated on the area east of South Africa and south of Madagascar (Fig.1), collections of the bottom fauna were made with a variety of gear including Campbell and Van Veen grabs, Phleger and trigger corers, Menzies and Agassiz trawls, rock dredges, and Dietz-Lafond snappers. On Cruise 8 collections were made in the Mozambique Channel and adjacent continental shelves (Fig. 2) mainly with a 40 ft. Gulf of Mexico type shrimp trawl, Menzies trawl, and Ockelman dredge. Cruise 9 emphasized reef and shore collecting in some of the more remote island areas in the southwestern Indian Ocean (Fig. 3). Specimens were obtained by SCUBA and free diving, rotenone poisoning, and collecting in the exposed intertidal zones of the reef and shore areas of Mombasa, Kenya (Fig. 4); Latham Island south of Zanzibar; Grand Comore and Mayotta Islands (Figs. 5 and 6); Aldabra and Farquhar Islands (Figs. 7 and 8); St. Joseph's and D'Arros Islands in the Amirante Isles (Fig. 9); and Mahe and Cerf Islands in the Seychelles (Fig.10) . Although general collections were made at all these areas, certain groups received special attention because of specific interests among the scientific party. These included macroscopic algae, seagrasses, mollusks, commensal and parasitic copepods, parasitic helminths, nemerteans, ostracods, lancelets, pontoniid shrimps, fishes and Ascothoracida, a parasitic group of barnacles found in the certain cavities of zoantharians and echinoderms. At most of the island stations, longline gear and a 200 ft. shark gill net were fished. Bottom trawling with a Gulf of Mexico shrimp trawl was impractical because of the many pinnacles and dome-shaped formations around the various islands. Towards the end of Cruise 9, a series of trawl hauls was made on the narrow continental shelf along the Somali coast. Most of the Cruise 9 scientific party left the ship at Aden on December 20. The remaining members made a series of plankton collections in the Red Sea, and disembarked at Rurghada, U.A.R. to make shore collections