Trawls

For the collection of megafauna an epibenthic trawl was used a total of eleven times during the DISCOL 1-3 cruises. The trawl was equipped with 0.3 m wide skids aside of the 2.3 m broad opening of the net. During the first DISCOL cruise the epibenthic trawl was used twice and collected a high number of larger manganese nodules (up to 13 cm in diameter).Thereby, abrasion with nodules usually destroyed the fauna, which is why during later cruises (DISCOL 2 and 3) the trawl was also equipped with a front net to catch the manganese nodules and to minimize the effects of abrasion.