We wanted to find out what creatures had come up to the surface at night, and Kat was especially interested in any squid that might swim our way. Many of the squid that normally live in the much darker deep waters migrate upwards at night, following the food layer. The darkness of the surface waters offers them protection and invisibility that during daytime would have to be sought deeper down. Now was the best time to find them.

Roscoe, Stuart and Emma saw to the lowering of the net, using one of the ship's booms. Then the floodlights were dimmed, to allow near-darkness around the net. After ten minutes or so of foot-tapping and clock-watching, the net would be hauled out, and Kat would detach the small catcher-bucket at the end of the net, emptying it into an acrylic cylinder, so we could examine her findings.

As most of non-experts pointed and asked 'what's that, what's that?', Kat and Roger our photographer (also a marine consultant) were reeling off long, complicated names as fast as they recognised the creatures.

In the hauls, we found an exciting variety of animals. Kat and Roger were surprised to see some deep-water fish, up to 6cm long, with brilliant silvery sides and photophores (light organs) along their bellies, and eyes that glowed bright red under the torch. There were also many interesting invertebrates - stunning blue copepods, red krill, a big grey isopod that seemed to be tasting everything else, a wriggling yellow polychaete worm with big orange eyes, some fairly mashed salps, and a bluebottle jellyfish with long dangerous-looking tentacles. Unfortunately there were no squid, but Kat decided to try again at dawn with a finer-meshed ring-net she had brought along. Tomorrow the sampling continues...