The area offshore of National Aquaculture Group Shrimp and Fish Farms near Al Lith was the scene of today’s study.   The conditions within this scene were far less than ideal, with stiff wind and high seas.  Nevertheless, the full (science and vessel) crew of the Aegaeo labored from both the main vessel and the zodiac to achieve much of what was laid out in the study plan. 

The rough seas encountered at Al Lith made for some ‘interesting’ moments for the zodiac crew, who carried out CTD and water sampling operations at the shallow stations close to the shore. 

The operations at Al Lith including deploying a mooring equipped with a CTD to acquire continuous measurements of temperature, salinity, turbidity and oxygen concentration. The latter two will give an indication as to whether or not, and how frequently, the effluent from the Al Lith aquaculture facility reaches the mooring site (black circle in the map above).   The mooring will be recovered sometime in late July or early August. 

Dimitris Velaoras, Dionysis Ballas and George Krokos (left to right) attaching a CTD to a mooring line.  The moored CTD will be in the water collecting data on temperature, salinity, turbidity and oxygen concentration over a number of weeks.

As with our earlier sampling areas, we acquired sediment samples near the Al Lith aquaculture facility using the Aegaeo’s box corer.  The samples will be analyzed for numerous properties (e.g., heavy metals, organic contaminants, carbonates, chloride, cyanide and nutrients) at the Hellenic Centre of Marine Research (HCMR) labs.

Abdullah Amoudi (NCEC) preparing the sediment sampler off Al Lith.