Preliminary report on the South Sandwich Island research cruise by RRS Discovery (DY098) in January-February 2019

This paper describes the structure and preliminary results of the research cruise to investigate the marine pelagic ecosystem around the South Sandwich Islands in the austral summer of 2019. The research cruise consisted of a large scale acoustic survey, following track lines established during the CCAMLR 2000 acoustic survey of Antarctic krill. Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) stations and net samples were taken along the track line at approximately 12 hours intervals (centred around midday and midnight). The net samples included a Rectangular Midwater Trawl 8+1, bongo nets and a NEuston MOdified net (NEMO) for micro-plastics. Cetacean observations were also taken along the acoustic track lines. This report provides information on the size of Antarctic krill caught, the distribution of acoustic backscatter attributed to krill using a swarms identification algorithm and a summary of the cetacean observations.